Grilli Type co-founder Thierry Blancpain will speak about how they built their foundry and detail how they approach the promotion of their typefaces. Specimens have been an important tool in typeface marketing for centuries but have grown ever more elaborate in the last few decades. In 2013 Grilli Type started creating a visual world around each of their releases in print as well as digitally with websites and animations. Believing there’s a better way to promotion than making scientifically tenuous legibility statements (“works great in small and large sizes”), they instead aim to visually communicate how their typefaces look and work. For releases referencing a historical source, their promotional websites also include original materials and explanations to highlight referenced works of design, and the talk will include a deeper dive into some of these.