The Fuse project has been going since 1991 - coming out of the design/art interface it's physical form began as a disquette with 4 or 5 fonts and a poster illustrating each one. The fonts are about pushing legibility, about pushing what one can say with language, with a keyboard, about "letters liberated from the necessity to represent words" (Brody).

Fuse98 is the third of the meetings organised by the Fuse team following Barcelona and Berlin. I didnt attend those but here I am in San Francisco for the Fuse98.

The restless minds behind it are essentially Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft. Erik Spiekermann from Metadesign and Fontshop was there bravely taking part but I didnt feel him to be at home. He seems to me more of an engineer than a radical.

Brody and Wozencroft are unhappy about the state of things - in design and the world. They feel there is more and more "stuff", less and less meaning, too much shouting and too little listening. For both of them the Fuse98 seemed to be an exhortation - a cry for responsibility, for ambition to change.

To this end the conference, entitled "Beyond Typography" was filled with an eclectic selection of "creatives". Clearly a lot of thought had gone into the selection. (see www.fuse98.com for the list).

Wozencroft had also selected a number of short films to show in between the speakers - including Peter Kubelka's wild scratch movie from 1940 and rare footage of Frederic Goudy in 1931 !