DABF23 Opening Talk: Polyphonic
07 December 2023, 6pm
Part talk, part book tour, join Dublin Art Book Fair’s Guest Curator Wendy Erskine in exploring this year’s theme, Polyphonic.
Walking Tour: The word is on the street… with Typography Ireland
28 November 2021, 11am - 12.30pm. Meet at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
Come on a discursive wander through the city, looking for material traces of the history of hand-made and analogue printing and lettering.
We’ll start at the site where the first book was printed in Ireland before taking in forgotten printers, type founders and distributors, and spotting along the way some of the loveliest (and least lovely!) letters in Dublin.
Typography Ireland’s Mary Ann Bolger and Clare Bell draw your attention to the cultural significance of overlooked letters and reflect on their manual production, including printing, carving and lettering.
Meeting Point: Temple Bar Gallery + Studios
This walking tour is inspired by the public lettering walks conducted by Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon.
Mary Ann Bolger is a lecturer in design history and programme chair of the MA Creative Arts, TU Dublin School of Creative Arts. She received her doctorate, on mid-twentieth century Irish graphic design and typography, from the Royal College of Art, London. She is the author of the monograph Design Factory: On the Edge of Europe (Dublin: Lilliput & Amsterdam: BIS, 2009). With Clare Bell, Mary Ann programmes the GradCAM research group Typography Ireland and represents Ireland as country delegate to ATypI. Together they co-convened the 2015 Face Forward International Typography Conference and ATypI’s annual international conference in Dublin, 2010.
Clare Bell is a designer, researcher, and lecturer at the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, she worked for several years as an editorial designer at The Guardian newspaper. She is a board member of Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), and an assessor on the annual Assessment Scheme of the International Society of Typographic Designers. As a practicing designer, she collaborates with Nathan O'Donnell on publishing projects. Recent work also includes Face Forward International Typography Conference, In Print journal, Cowhouse Studios, IMRAM Irish Language Literature Festival, Typography Ireland, NCAD/GradCAM (Object Matters: Making 1916), and ATypI.
This event takes place as part of Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, sponsored by Henry J Lyons and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.
