It may not stir up as much excitement as when The Rolling Stones came to town, but fans of typography are gearing up for the arrival of the rock n roll superstars of type for New Zealand's first ever International Typography Symposium.
Catherine Griffiths is the mastermind behind TypeSHED11 and has spent the last 18 months rounding up some of the world's top font and graphic designers.
"I have this particular passion and obsession with typography and its voice and language, the way it can express content, meaning and that for me is what I find so interesting," she says.
Christian Schwartz has designed around ten typeface families, which means when all the bolds, italics and different weights are counted, he has clocked in around 1,000 fonts - including ones used by the Guardian and Esquire Magazine.
"I'll stop at every window, look at every magazine, look at every newspaper and I don't even realise that I'm doing this, but ideas for typefaces can come from anywhere," Schwartz says. "And it's also important for me to see how type is being used."
Using type has always been the preferred choice for Experimental Jetset. For them words are much more honest than images.
"Images always seem to be about seduction, pulling you into some kind of fairy tale world," says Experimental Jetset's Danny van den Dungen. "While words always seem to be quite hardcore what it is, it's just words on a poster. There's no illusion."
The event officially kicked off tonight and organisers are expecting to draw all types over the next four days.
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