Hoping it’s not lost on the author that the “funky, tilted” type used for the Front End Guide advert is not just evocative of an earlier time, it is a direct homage/imitation of the original paperback cover of the Douglas Adams comic novel “Life, the Universe, and Everything” to which the title of the name of the conference refers: http://iv1.lisimg.com/image/34956/305full-life,-the-universe-and-everything-cover.jpg

As such, it seems perhaps more of a limited case of homage than a representative example of some greater trend…