A new website for ATypI
“For our members, by our members” is the driver of the changes that the board of ATypI has started to set in motion. We are working to transform the Association so that it is more relevant to aspiring and practising designers in all matters relating to type and typography. We want ATypI to facilitate students and professionals to exchange information, teach skills and transfer knowledge to each other, irrespective of where our members live. Some first steps have already been announced at the most recent ATypI conference in Antwerp: we have introduced a flat $15 annual membership fee; we have launched our Working Seminars. Our current president, Gerry Leonidas, writes about these actions in other posts in this publication.
“For our members, by our members” is also the driver for the structure of the new website. At the recent ATypI conference in Antwerp we presented our thinking and how it ties in with all the other activities the board is currently working on. The new website places you, our ATypI members, at its heart. The website will enable members around the world to make connections and communicate with each other. The new website is also a platform for corporate and educational organisations to interact with our membership, and in turn for individual members to interact with our institutional members and partners.
We aspire to strengthen the position of ATypI as the global forum for the type community and business, and build links with other design-focused organisations. We believe that ATypI can also serve as a link to non-design disciplines from the sciences and humanities that intersect typography. This will underline the relevance of type and typography to diverse disciplines, and benefit our individual and institutional members.
The new website design will comprise a main website that houses ATypI as an organisation built around membership, and supports the four key areas we have identified in conversation with many of our members. ATypI conferences will have their own microsite that exclusively deals with conference related activities and concerns. This approach allows each conference to have an individual identity alongside the main ATypI identity, and without confusion with other activities. This will also allow continuity in our comprehensive archiving of past events.
Crucially, the new ATypI website will be viewable in any current device environment. It will be possible to view your interactions with other ATypI members or your conference schedule on your mobile phone, on the go. This dynamic access is facilitated by a simple typographic design.
This design simplicity was achieved after researching related organisations. But the design does not only facilitate mobile-friendly viewing of the website. It goes further in that it enables contributors to submit their work in a manner that will help maintain a consistent look and feel, and consistency of our members’ information on the site and on event listings, without extensive manual work by our executive team.
“For our members, by our members” is the driver for all the changes at ATypI. Accordingly, the member pages on the website will be given particular attention. Registering details is open to all who are interested in type and typography, but only members will receive enhanced benefits such as access to value content, and specific details of members, and being able to participate in conversations and shaping the organisation. Member profiles will be administered by the individual. Personal details can be added, and interests can be tagged to help with search and other functions and all profiles have basic visibility to everyone, with members having further profile viewing access. We are aiming to grow the functions available to members through their profiles over time, after we roll out the first version and gather feedback. As an organisation we do have a legal obligation to ensure that content follows rules and guidelines which will of course be published.
ATypI is dedicated to support its community with as much free content as possible, much of which will be hosted on or through the new website. The main site, the organisation site, will contain all relevant information about ATypI, what we stand for, our goals, general content, links with partner organisations and much more. Microsites will exclusively host conference information, such as program, speakers, and activities around the conference.
We are aiming to launch the new website, and the new conference site in time for the ATypI Tokyo 2019 conference. In the time until Tokyo 2019 we are aiming to introduce elements of the website step-by-step to start rolling out the benefits of being an ATypI member. We are doing our best to fulfill our commitments to our members but it is important to remember that ATypI is run by volunteers, and everyone actively involved in the growth of the organisation also has day jobs which may lead to delays in delivering certain parts of our commitments to our members.
