The biannual ICTVC conference is going to start next week in Nicosia, Cyprus. From the 15. to the 19. of June, a series of workshops and the three-day main conference will discuss this year’s theme of ‘Lending grace to language’.

It is the fourth time this conference on typography takes place and the first time its programme unfolds in Nicosia, rather than Thessaloniki. This time will be my first attendance and participation. As every conference has its own crowd, its own culture and specificities, I am delighted to discover the differences to other comparable venues. One aspect that already looks particularly promising is the variety of subjects, the wide range of nationalities of speakers and the importance of ‘world typography’ (for lack of a better term and dissatisfaction with ‘non-latin typography’) in the subjects covered. With participants from the US, Europe, over the Middle East to India, Singapore, down to Australia and New Zealand, pretty much every continent will be represented and the range of subjects reflects this nicely: obviously a great deal of talks will be centred around Greek typography, a number of scientific approaches to the subject are included, quite a few talks tackle issues of Indian scripts, and, to my particular excitement, a whole range of talks will address Arabic typography. The latter sounds particularly thrilling to me, for presentations come from as different perspectives as Iranian calligraphy, predictions for the future of the Arabic alphabet from Lebanon, design education in Jordan, to my own contribution about the work that went into Aisha.

Can’t wait to meet new people, old friends and discuss typography under the Cypriot sun!