...On Our TedX Adventure

#TYPEHUNTRINO

Last night, we hosted an event with Ted X Mile High, an adventure to be exact. This adventure started out with a short talk and culminated in a scavenger hunt for found type in our favorite part of town, RiNo. The evening started out with a small TED style talk about typography in the community and the current typographic landscape here in Denver. We had a blast. If you missed it, we hope to catch you at the next one, but for now, we thought this would be a good chance to share an excerpt from the talk itself:

Public typography is an incredibly relevant and active thing in a growing community, and we pose three ways that anyone can be a better steward of it. We call them the three "-tions":

Preservation
Documentation
Celebration

Preservation is a big deal in a rapidly growing city. Denver is growing incredibly fast. Entire city blocks are being re-zoned and redeveloped for the population explosion going on right now. Denver, being uniquely placed in the country has a special cultural history that's worth preserving. 

Documentation of the typographic gems you find throughout a city can go a long way towards defining a city's unique voice. We've been documenting a lot of beautiful things on Instagram under the #typehuntdenver tag, but there are lots of ways to contribute to archives of found type. The scavenger hunt we crafted aims to get everyone sharing Denver's type in this way. 

Celebration! Celebration is always key because you can do as much documentation as you want, but if you're not sharing them or having the conversations around what they mean to the city then you're missing the point. Denver has a chance to embrace it's fascinating typographic history by celebrating what that history is and means, and then instilling it into future growth.  

We believe that typography is a major part of what comprises our global, national, and local cultures. Therefore, the preservation of our typography is the preservation of our culture. 

After the talk, we sent everyone out in teams for a type Scavenger Hunt in the RiNo area. Folks snapped up some great photos, but there were a LOT of clues left unfound! There are lots of vibrant photos from the hunt you can see in the #typehuntrino tag on Instagram, or if you find yourself in the area, contribute to it yourself. It was so great to see people come out to share in an experience with other people, and to explore a part of town that has such a rich and vibrant type history. If you're reading this and you're not in Denver, We challenge you to not let the history of your community fade. 

Big thank you's go to Cate and Lauren at TedXMileHigh Adventures, Pon Pon for the killer space for the event, and to everyone who came out. We're looking forward to more type events like this one!