September 24th, 2013

Changes to the Board of Directors

The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is pleased to announce that Sharon Oiga, Mary Catherine Pflug, and Erik Vorhes have joined its Board of Directors, effective immediately. Each will bring their notable experiences and skills to SOTA — and, in particular, to SOTA’s annual conference, TypeCon.

Also, Michelle Perham will be leaving the SOTA Board of Directors at the end of 2013. Michelle joined the Board in 2007, and has most recently served as Treasurer. Michelle’s contributions to SOTA and TypeCon will be missed, and the Board thanks her for the time and effort she has given during her six-year tenure.

Current Board members Christopher Slye and Juliet Shen remain Chairman of the Board and Secretary, respectively. Neil Summerour has been appointed Treasurer.

About the Directors

Corey Holms studied graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts, and has been practicing it for over 15 years. He has worked with a wide range of clients from multinational corporations to local boutiques. Although primarily working in entertainment design (movie posters), he also specializes in identity and type design. He has been affiliated with the Society of Typographic Aficionados since 2010, when he designed the identity for the Los Angeles conference, Babel.

Grant Hutchinson photographs suburbia, parses fonts, noodles code, appreciates obsolete computing platforms, and sweats the details in Calgary, Alberta. He enjoys black coffee, low-bit electropop, geometric sans serifs, Chuck Taylor hightops, Speyside single malts, juggling, and the smell of a freshly tarred roof. His background includes a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Alberta College of Art & Design (ACAD), an Emmy Award for his technical work during the 1988 Winter Olympics, and being one of the founders of Veer. He is currently head glyph monkey at Typostrophe and Fairgoods, as well as a contributing editor for Typedia.

Frank J. Martinez is founder of The Martinez Group PLLC, a Brooklyn-based law firm specializing in intellectual property protection. A former designer and Design Patent Examiner, Martinez earned a BFA in Fine Art from Pratt Institute in New York and served as Production Director for Landor Associates prior to attending law school. Having worked closely with design professionals for many years in both design and legal capacities, Martinez understands firsthand the business and intellectual property issues faced by designers.

Sharon Oiga holds BFAs (Graphic Design & Photography) from the UIC School of Design and an MFA from Yale. At multidisciplinary design firms, she worked for clients such as Motorola, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, ACCO Brands, and Fermilab. She is currently an Associate Professor at UIC. Her work is consistently recognized and funded, twice by Sappi Ideas That Matter. She was Programming Co-Chair of the third AIGA FutureHistory Conference, and she is presently co-chairing the STA-Chicago Retreat Conference (Jan 2014). Additionally, she is writing and has recently completed an article for UCDA’s Designer Magazine. She is also allergic to cats.

Mary Catherine Pflug is a type designer, publication designer, honors student studying International Business and Art History at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Alum of the prestigious South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Mary Catherine has a penchant for museums and has worked the collections of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum and Monhegan Museum. What off-time she enjoys is spent in Europe and Japan with the rest tirelessly volunteering her time to SOTA for the past two years. And, yes, she is one half of TypeSisters.

Juliet Shen was born in New York, moved to Seattle, and ran an independent design firm there for 23 years. Since earning a Master of Typeface Design from the University of Reading in 2006, she has designed Bullen (Font Bureau), Earlybird (Oxford University Press), Lushootseed School (Tulalip Tribes) and AwanZaman Latin (collaboration with Mamoun Sakkal). She is the author of “Searching for Morris Fuller Benton,” published by Sherwin Beach Press. As a SOTA board member Juliet takes special interest in the Education Forum. She teaches typography at the School of Visual Concepts and is part of the Duwamish Artist Residency in Seattle. She is represented by Beth Cullom Gallery.

Christopher Slye is a life-long resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. He worked as an independent type designer and developer before joining Adobe’s typographic staff in 1997, where he first helped to expand the design and functionality of Adobe Originals typefaces. Later, he guided Adobe’s type-related technology, licensing and initiatives — including its partnership with, and acquisition of, the pioneering web font service, Typekit. Today, he is a member of Adobe’s Typekit team, where he works to improve the way people use and experience type.

Neil Summerour obsessively creates letters. His Positype foundry carries the flag for his typefaces while Swash & Kern allows him to put a face to much of his custom lettering. As equally comfortable looping around with corporate commissions as he is personal projects and foundry releases, he is always at home in the studio. He teaches, lectures, workshops, mentors, and loves type & lettering. He’s a maker with Fairgoods, a maker of bad jokes and a devoted follower of creativity. He lives in Georgia with his family, with always one foot in Japan.

Erik Vorhes is the managing editor for Typedia, where he also coauthors the weekly “Type News” column, and a User Interface Engineer at Facebook. He has been working on the web in one form or other since 1995 and continues to believe in its potential to open the world to everyone. In a previous life he studied early English literature, which means he is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. He lives in San Carlos, California, with his family.

Delve Withrington has been crafting fonts for over 15 years and is a former type designer for FontShop and Monotype. Delve creates bespoke type on commission and often collaborating, releases new type through his foundry, Delve Fonts. For SOTA, Delve secures sponsors, organizes the Catalyst Award and the TypeGallery. He enjoys painting, science fiction, cooking, and a well-timed pun. Delve lives with his family in Alameda, California.

About SOTA

The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) is an international not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion, study, and support of type, its history and development, its use in the world of print and digital imagery, its designers, and its admirers.