In Novem­ber last year, the ISTD – Inter­na­tional Soci­ety of Typo­graphic Design­ers – orga­nized a lec­ture tour through five cities in the UK and North­ern Ire­land. I have to be care­ful with the proper place names here. We tend to sim­ply refer to Great Britain or – even worse – Eng­land. That would have been totally wrong, as the jour­ney took us from Belfast via Glas­gow and Man­ches­ter to Bris­tol and Lon­don. All that in five days, with two lec­tures each. I was priv­i­leged to have two col­leagues in each city appear with me. The tour was called “Kern up the Vol­ume”, and I had my own tour man­ager, chap­eron, mas­ter of cer­e­monies and min­der in Jonathan Doney, who was just as knack­ered as I was at the end of it. This was a kind of farewell tour as pres­i­dent of the ISTD. I am no longer PISTD, but PPISTD: Past President.

In Belfast Liam McComish, Course Direc­tor at the School of Art and Design, Uni­ver­sity of Ulster, recorded a lit­tle movie dur­ing ques­tion time and called it iErik. It is short and not des­tined for Hol­ly­wood, but the idea is great, so I put it under down­load.