The Typographic Joyride presented by Cinema Speakeasy, Echo Park Film Center, KERNSPIRACY and Machine Project December 5, 2010

Save the date for Sunday, December 5th, because Cinema Speakeasy, Echo Park Film Center, KERNSPIRACY and Machine Project are taking you on THE TYPOGRAPHY JOYRIDE.

There are a few things in this world that you will probably never live without: Oxygen, people, and words.

It's this last element - well, typography, if you wanna split hairs - that we're especially interested in this month, and we want to help you learn more about the wonderful, esoteric, magical world of typeface design.

So, Cinema Speakeasy is teaming up with Machine Project, the Echo Park Film Center, and KERNSPIRACY to present THE TYPOGRAPHY JOYRIDE, a combination workshop and screening event.

We promise that when we're done with you, you'll never look at a billboard, book, magazine, food truck logo, street sign or potatoes in the same way again.

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POTATO-TYPE & RANSOM NOTES:
A hands-on typography workshop with a verrry practical application

Sunday, December 5th, 5PM- 7:30PM
Machine Project
(1200 D North Alvarado St, Los Angeles 90026)
Class size limit: 32 people
Tickets (to cover materials cost): $20*
Workshop registration available online at: http://machineproject.com/events/2010/12/05/potatotype/
*Workshop registration also gives you free entry to Typeface screening

If you ever want to see your _______ alive again, join designer Micah Hahn, KERNSPIRACY's Spencer Cross, and the Cinema Speakeasy girls at Machine Project's first ever potato type ransom note workshop, where we'll cover the dangerous intricacies of type-design – from Daggers to Graves - and learn a little about counters, kerning and some things in-between.

Award-winning broadcast and graphic designer Micah Hahn will lead the group in a lighting typography tutorial - from counters to kerning, daggers to graves, ogoneks to carons, cedillas to commas, and everything in between. Each student will then be assigned a knife, and a letter of the alphabet, and a potato of their choice - and will be charged with making one element of what by the end of class will become Machine Project's brand-new Communal Potato-Type Typeface.

But wait- there's also a practical application!

Remember that ghost stories book that your best friend borrowed last year and never returned? Well we have a way of helping you get that back. It's called extortion, and nothing helps extortion like a beautifully crafted ransom note.

So, at the end of class, we'll help each and evey one of you get your way by helping you lay out a ransom note, to be set on [fancy paper here] for you to send to someone you want something from.

Envelopes will be provided. Legal protection will not.

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SCREENING OF TYPEFACE
Great Characters, Both Wooden and Human

Sunday, December 5th, 7:45PM - 10PM
Echo Park Film Center
(1200 North Alvarado St, Los Angeles 90026)
Ticket cost (available at the door): $5*
*Or free with workshop registration. All revenue from screening to be split between the Echo Park Film Center and the 'Typeface' filmmakers.

After you have honed your extortion and potato carving skills, walk next door to take a load off, pop a beer and kick back with some new friends at Cinema Speakeasy's screening of Typeface. As with all Cinema Speakeasy events, drinking is highly encouraged, as is sharing of alcohol.

TYPEFACE
Feature-length documentary
Dir./Prod. by Justine Nagan

In rural Wisconsin, a lone employee waits in a cavernous old museum for visitors to come. A few individuals straggle in every few days and then, come Friday, the museum fills with life. Machines hum, presses print, artists buzz about. One weekend each month, the quiet of Two Rivers is interrupted as carloads of artisans drive in from across the Midwest. The place comes alive as printmaking workshops led by, and filled with, some of the nation’s top design talent descend on the sleepy enclave.

In a time when people can carry computers in their pockets and watch TV while walking down the street, Typeface dares to explore the twilight of an analog craft that is freshly inspiring artists in a digital age. The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI personifies cultural preservation, rural re-birth and the lineage of American graphic design. At Hamilton, international artisans meet retired craftsmen and together navigate the convergence of modern design and traditional technique. But the Museum’s days are numbered. What is the responsibility of artists and historians to preserve a dying craft? How can rural towns survive in a shifting industrial marketplace where big-box retailers are king?

"Typeface the movie is like porn for designers." (- Varsko!)

"It's a well-crafted film, with human characters that are funny and sad, lovely camera work and taut editing... a movie that's equally appealing to art school hipsters and to lovers of rural America." (- Susan Troller, The Capital Times)

Official Website: http://machineproject.com/events/2010/12/05/typography-night/