About the Schedule
Classes and lectures are scheduled on evenings and weekends to accommodate working professionals. The program is limited to 18 participants, and tuition for each term includes all three mandatory core classes and two non-mandatory electives. Schedules for the second and third terms will be updated as they are finalized.
Core classes are restricted to students accepted into the full program. Electives and guest lectures are open to the public, space permitting. Public registration for electives is available through the Cooper Union Continuing Education website; members of the Type Directors Club receive a 20% discount when registering in person or by phone (212-353-4195).
First Term Schedule: Fall 2010
Core Classes
Introduction to Typeface Design
This course introduces basic principles and techniques of typeface design through a series of exercises and one major project. Designing a digital revival typeface, inspired by historical sources, cultivates skills of observation, analysis, reasoning, and problem-solving. Students will leave the course prepared for the more ambitious project that will span the following two terms.
Each student must bring a Macintosh or Windows laptop computer to each class session, with FontLab installed. Discounted academic pricing is available for this software.
Tools and Technology
This course focuses on the role that changes in tools and technology have had on the evolution of the letterform. Technological innovations often open new possibilities but also come with unique limitations, both of which create an environment for creative solutions. Special attention will be paid to the major technological landmarks and their influence on typeface design. Topics will include broad nib vs pointed quill, hot metal typesetting, phototypesetting, screen fonts, and others.
Calligraphic Letterforms
Working with various tools, calligraphers strive to make fluid characters with unity of form and style. Demonstrations and hands-on attempts will help participants gain insight into the use of broad edged tools for lettering. The focus will be on the essential construction of Roman minuscules and italic forms with attention to pen angles, proportions, stroke weight, serifs, joins and other specific details... and of course spacing and more spacing! With a simple device such as a marker, it’s easier to craft a letter than to draw its outline. We only need to use our eyes, but tools of the trade will offer tangible proof of how it’s been done for centuries.
Electives
The Drawn Letter
Lettering is a unique discipline, offering a distinctive means of visual expression not possible with writing or conventional typography. Among the drawn letter’s characteristic advantages is its potential not simply to communicate content, but to become content itself. This workshop will investigate recent historical approaches to lettering, in addition to exploring various production techniques. Participants will refer to familiar typographic models and helpful specimens as they create their own hand-drawn wordmarks. Comprehensive slide presentations and drawing demonstrations will provide further guidance as students acquire a practical foundation for implementing one-of-a-kind lettering in various design contexts.
Experiment and Expression in Letterform Design
This workshop applies a method of creating unconventional letter forms that often leads participants to expressive modes and characteristics that lie outside of their previous experience. Along the way, participants exercise the visual skills inherent to the creation of all alphabetic systems ranging in scope from word marks to extensive typeface complements. Particular attention is given to defining and developing an interrelated system of expression and character. Other challenges include: clarity of ideas, optical issues, proportions, rhythm and form integrity, as well as the translation of the vibrancy and energy in original sketches. Although the workshop begins with the use of thoroughly unconventional lettering tools, it ends in the digital realm. Therefore, participants need computer proficiency and well developed Bezier-vector drafting skills.
Guest Lectures
Turning Lead into Gold: 19th-Century American Type Foundries & Their Specimen Books
This talk was adapted from the annual Hofer Lecture in Graphic Arts at Harvard in April, 2010. It covers the design and production of type in the nineteenth century from the earliest days of typefounding in America, technological advances, the aesthetics of “Victorian” type, the “Artistic Printing” movement, and the demise of the great type foundries and formation of the American Type Founders Company at the end of the century.
Type Design & Production, The Revolutionary Years
Drawing on personal experiences, Mike Daines traces the 25 years where, he argues, the greatest changes took place in the type world: 1965 to 1990. Illustrating the display typeface boom, the first “independent” type design companies, and the change from photographic to digital technology that underpinned the new “type democracy”, Daines chronicles the type revolution, and discusses its implications for current practice.
The Guardian Egyptian
In 2003 Paul Barnes was approached to be the typographic consultant on the redesign of the Guardian newspaper. During the following two years, Barnes’s role evolved from consulting on typography to designing a completely new typeface with his American collaborator Christian Schwartz. Schwartz will walk the audience through the complete process behind the development of Guardian Egyptian, including false starts and changes of direction, and explain how and why the Guardian’s needs lead to a family of 200-odd styles.
Round Pegs in Square Holes: Developing Type for Screen-based Media
As digital technologies evolved over the past 20 years, the need for specialized fonts that perform in pixel-based environments has grown. With recent advances in how fonts can be used on web pages, a new market is opening for designers, publishers, and developers eager to bridge the typographic gap between print and the screen. Having overseen many screen-based typographic design projects, Roger Black will address the ins and outs of developing and deploying fonts for the web, mobile devices, and more.
Second Term Schedule: Spring 2011
Core Classes
Designing an Original Typeface
Expression and personal investment take precedence when designing a new typeface from scratch. In this course, students will hone their new skills while learning to develop an original concept into a structurally sound design. This in-depth project will extend into the third term.
Motivations Behind Typeface Design
Aside from technological evolution, typeface design has also been driven by the personal or collective challenges to the status quo. Experimentation and innovation have led to a number of movements within typeface design. This course will look closely at some of the major formal shifts within typeface design and the motivations behind them. Topics will include vernacular, Romain du Roi, Victorian and wood type, Bauhaus, De Stijl, and others.
Understanding and Experiencing the Designspace
In this course we will examine type design from a viewpoint that offers an alternative to the historical model of categorization. Inspired by Gerrit Noordzij’s teachings we will explore the design space in closely guided sketching sessions. At the end of this hands-on workshop the students will have created a number of possible starting points for personal typeface design projects and understand the choices available to them.
In order to confidently engage the design process a type designer has to be aware of the entire theoretical room of possible letterforms she is navigating. Only a profound understanding of the multi-dimensional design space as a concept and the most important extrema therin will enable the type designer to make design choices that go beyond elaborating on historical letterforms and instead create truly unique typefaces.
On the journey through the certificate program this course is located at the end of basic training and offers an entry into a personal typeface design. Basic experience in writing with the pointed nib as well as the broad nib pen is required.
Electives
TBDGuest Lectures
TBDThird Term Schedule: Summer 2011
Core Classes
Advanced Typeface Design
In this course, typefaces developed during the second term are refined and polished according to current industry standards. Topics will include multiple-style type families, interpolation, language support, kerning, and workflow automation. Course content is tailored to the specific needs and interests of individual students.
Typeface Design in Context
Typefaces aren’t designed in a vacuum, and as such they are affected by, and affect a multitude of fields. The realm within which typeface design exists and is practiced, from practical to theoretical, will be the focus of this course. Topics will include history of the type specimen, custom designs, national typefaces, and others.