It's about time

I've been meaning to do this for some time now and have tried to make a post before (once I even made it as far as a full post that has been sitting in the drafts section of the blog for weeks). Thanks to a few friendly requests, I have finally been able to motivate myself to show a bit of what I've been doing over the last month:

The course thus far has been full of a fairly diverse mix of classes that range from being vaguely-related to fully interconnected. This is one aspect of the program that I really like. Even within such a specific discipline as Type Design, there are lots of avenues to specialize in, and the onus is on the student to figure out how the diverse topics we are covering might be able to relate to one another.

Another aspect of the program that I really enjoy is that it is incredibly easy to see the outcome of your efforts. It does not take long before you are able to visually see the results of what you are being taught. Even two months into the course I am able to arrange 10 sheets of calligraphy side by side in chronological order and take note of how far my writing has come. That being said, the progression is slow and you might say it's come from being outright atrocious to slightly less atrocious.

So, I suppose you all want to take a look at what I've been doing. There is a lot of stuff to show, so trying to describe it all in one post would be too much, so I'll try to post a few times over the next few days and each time show a different project we are working on.

Like I've said before, a lot of the first semester of the course is based on small assignments and many of these small assignments are based around writing. I have already mentioned that every week we do calligraphy exercises. The idea behind this is to understand through practice why the majority of our letterforms look the way they do and how different materials have influenced these shapes. Here are a few snapshots of two recent pages of calligraphy; one with the broad nib pen (first) and the other with the pointed pen (second). You can see how a small change in the pen shape has a huge bearing on the shapes of the letterforms. (I apologize in advance for the quality of images. It's late.)




In the past few weeks we've begun an ongoing activity in sketching letters, based largely on the models discovered through calligraphy. To do this, one of our teachers has been a little java application called Type Cooker which, when loaded, outputs a random series of variables specifying the characteristics of letterforms. For instance, it gives values for the type of construction (roman, italic), the type of contrast (broad nib, pointed pen, transitional, brush), the amount of contrast (none at all to extremely high), the various proportions of letters, and a few special characteristics (for newsprint, for display, must contain 1 ligature, can only contain straight lines, etc).

The premise of the assignment is that we all have our own set of sensibilities we will immediately gravitate towards when beginning to draw type. The purpose of the typecooker is to give a random list of 'ingredients' that will push us to think of letters we would not otherwise consider. The idea is to sketch quickly, so some are better than others:

(short ascenders, thin stroke, no contrast, rounded terminals, 1 ligrature, narrow, etc)

(italic, low contrast, thin, slight compressed, 1 ligature, long ascenders, long descenders)

(long ascenders, narrow, high contrast, wedge serifs, brush contrast, two ligatures)
(long ascenders, medium contrast, pointed pen, can only contain straight lines)


(swash initial, pointed pen, italic, low contrast, slab serifs) * yes, the serif on the d is going the wrong way.


The last thing I'll show in the vein of drawing/sketching is an assignment we did recently to understand how contrast works according to Gerrit Noordzij's theory in "the Stroke of the Pen". The idea was to explore the way in which low contrast (less difference between thick and thin strokes) letters are made by thickening the thin strokes of a letter drawn with a pointed pen or broad nib pen, and how high contrast letters are made by thickening the thick strokes of letters drawn the same way. The first drawing is what I deemed to be normal contrast, the second is the low contrast version made by thickening the thin strokes, and the last is the high contrast version made by thickening the thick strokes.


As you can tell, there is a huge emphasis on learning by doing and this is also one of the really strong points of the program. If I was to describe it to someone interested in going, I would say that you really gain an intimate understanding of the construction and shape of letterforms by making them yourself. The last example of this, which I will hopefully be able to post tomorrow, is stone carving. Starting three week ago, we have an 11 week course in stone carving. Again, the idea is that by constructing letterforms using historical models, you can begin to understand a bit about why letters look the way they do and how to make use of these conventions to create new and innovative type designs.