Last week I had the privilege of being one of the speakers at the Type Brigade up in Vancouver BC.
It was my first time speaking in front of a crowd and I think it went pretty well. Although I don’t remember some of what I spoke about 😉 I chose to speak about me (I know, pretty humble, right?) and how type has played a part in my life/career so far. I started out with ‘A Day in the Life’ video, made by the talented Mr. Ryan Cory, that set the tone for the talk.
From there, I went into ‘The History of Chaun, Part I’, where I spoke about where I grew up out in the desert, a son of an architect and super creative little Chinese woman.
As I started thinking of what to say, it was really amazing how early on type and graphic design played a part in my childhood.
My little brother and I would sit around for hours making our own custom baseball/basketball cards, clipping out popular athletes from my dad’s Sports Illustrated’s.
My little brother and I would sit around for hours making our own custom baseball/basketball cards, clipping out popular athletes from my dad’s Sports Illustrated’s. We even chopped up other real cards, stealing their silver and gold foil for ours. Important rules like kerning and leading were not in our vocabulary at the time, but we paid strict attention to those rules without knowing it.
Next I went into ‘The History of Chaun, Part II’, where I spoke about my time working at huge sporting events like the World Cup and Olympics, helping my dad draft up venue plans for these large game-day events.
School came next, well, old-skool production printing methods and setting type manually for 2 quarters, before jumping into the computer. That really helped understand the printing process and to appreciate letterforms.
‘The History of Chaun, Part III’ took us to making the move up to Seattle with my family.
Moving on from there and transitioning into working at Urban Influence, and how I started out as a contract designer, working hard to become the Senior Art Director here. I’m super proud of the work and always enjoy working with such a talented team of people. I also had the chance to show some type related marks that may not have been chosen along the way, as most work we do does. So, here was my chance to show some…
Fast-forward into some current web projects that we’ve been working on and how type plays an important role in setting a brand/company’s tone and extending that into every touchpoint and device along the way.
And finally, ending with a real piece of wisdom, given to me by my dad, a long time ago. Which holds true, every single day. I should receive the video of it any day now, I hope it rings true that I thought I did an alright job.
