Jessica Hische handed out this letterpress keepsake to everyone who attended her talk.

As you may know, this year’s TypeCon is being held in New Orleans, LA. I’m thrilled about this for a couple of reasons — mainly because people from all over the world are gathering in our state (and my hometown) to talk about type and design! The fact is, while we may not have the sheer volume of designers that places like New York City have, we do have a great community of passionate, talented designers who are eager to share that passion with designers from around the world. And I’m pretty sure this year’s TypeCon attendees will be quite pleased by the incredible food and culture New Orleans has to offer.

All that being said, I am saddened to admit that I cannot attend the conference this weekend. Which is why I was so excited to learn that Jessica Hische was giving an opening talk for the conference that was open to the public. On Wednesday night we headed down to the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans to hear the amazingly talented letterer/illustrator (or, as she more accurately describes herself, “interneter/designustrator”) talk about her impressive career. Jessica Hische is an equally impressive speaker, it turns out, and gave a very entertaining talk about her successes and mishaps along the way. (Did you know she was rejected by community college before being accepted to Tyler School of Art? Kind of shocking!)

As if we weren’t feeling inspired enough by Jessica Hische’s talk, we took a look at some of the incredible work on display for the duration of the conference. If you’re in the New Orleans area this weekend I highly recommend you stop by the Royal Sonesta and take a look at the work on display in the lobby. The bar for good design is continuously being raised, and the designers on display at TypeCon are at the forefront of good design.

One last thing: if you’re in New Orleans for TypeCon this weekend, you’ve got to experience all the amazing food the city has to offer. TypeCon put together a restaurant guide on their website, so be sure to check it out.

I think every business is familiar with being your own last priority as a client, which has been our experience in updating our website design. After being put on the backburner several times in the past few months, we are thrilled to announce the launch of the new (and improved) Artifex site! We are excited to have added a blog this time around, so we can keep clients updated and talk about our number one passion, design! We have also made it easier to keep our portfolio up to date by building the site with WordPress. The great thing about this new design is we now have a solid foundation off of which we can continue to build and tweak as needed. Instead of redesigning the site every couple of years, we plan to “realign” things over time, resulting in a website that will grow with the company and changing web technologies, while keeping in tact the solid structure we built the site with.

So, take a look around, and let us know what you think. This is only the beginning of what’s in store for the new site. We’re looking forward to leaving behind our old, stagnant site and embracing the ability to give you new content, more frequent updates, and a little realigning here and there as we grow.