Stanford SILICON is honored to serve as host for the 2026 ATypI conference, one of the largest and most important type design conferences in the world.
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Over four decades ago, ATypI sponsored the groundbreaking 1983 Working Seminar “The Computer and the Hand in Type Design,” organized by MacArthur Genius Grant-winning designer Charles “Chuck” Bigelow and Computer Science legend Donald Knuth, whose shared vision helped define the digital era of type. It was a seminal event that bridged hand-drawn typographic tradition with the new frontier of computer-assisted design, helping catalyze the digital typography revolution.
Now, in 2026, ATypI returns to Stanford to honor and build upon that transformative legacy, drawing on its long-standing leadership in the Humanities, Computer Science, Design, and entrepreneurship. Stanford is where Donald Knuth created TeX and METAFONT, and serves as home to the Unicode Consortium’s foundational documents, the papers of the Apple Corporation, and the largest collection in the world on modern East Asian text technologies, among other prized collections. It’s a place where interdisciplinary thinking continues to shape global standards for how writing systems are rendered and transmitted. Today, SILICON and the Face/Interface conference carry this legacy forward, advancing inclusive, multilingual, and cross-platform design practices.
Situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford offers not only historical resonance but also proximity to influential institutions, such as Apple, Adobe, the Letterform Archive, and the Computer History Museum, among others. On campus, visitors will be able to take part in field trips to Stanford’s world-class manuscript collections, the Cantor Arts Center, the d.School, the Silicon Valley Archives, and more.
ATypI 2026 Stanford promises to be more than a conference — it will be a convergence of history, technology, and imagination, offering the global type community a chance to reflect on the past and shape the next generation of typographic innovation.