Get a prominent ad at a reasonable rate. Support Typographica. In , after 13 years as a self-employed graphic designer, I decided to abandon the professional world and go back to school — this time to pursue a field that seems related, but is an entirely separate discipline: typeface design. There are a few handy tips in here, too.
You join the Bachelor of Communication Design students that chose the type design unit as an elective for a four hour class each week for one semester — approximately twelve weeks. You begin each class with an hour lecture, then you have three hours studio time to work on your project. A minimum of an extra nine hours during your week is required to complete the assignments. This unit teaches the basic skills of using a font editor at the time we used FontLab , now they are using RoboFont , an introduction into type construction, spacing, and some type design history.
Our assignments included creating a modular font A—Z, 0—9 , a brush- or pen-inspired font, and finally a self-initiated project. In each you are encouraged to expand the character set to include upper and lowercase, numerals and punctuation. A research assignment on an existing typeface to present to the class was also a part of the assessment. For our final submission we designed a small specimen for each font we created. If you are living in Australia, I highly recommend this course as a good introduction to type design while still having the ability to continue your freelance work.
And for those living elsewhere, the good news is that undergraduate courses with a focus on type design are becoming more common. Check in with your local university or art school. For those seriously interested in creating type, the Type Cooper Condensed Postgraduate Certificate in Typeface Design might be for you. This course, based in New York, is a five week type design bootcamp for fifteen selected participants from around the world.
The course is setup especially for international students, so be prepared to benefit from new lifelong friends at your future travel destinations. Type Cooper is an intense course from day one. It compacts the contact hours from the yearlong Extended program into five weeks!
