I agree. There should be something offered stateside. Like a week long intro course. Maybe more, if there is enough demand. Full days. I spent 2 semesters at pcad in letterform design, and I still feel like a need more. Of course, east coast / west coast folks would be the lucky ones.

As a side note, if Jonothan Hoefler would take me on, I’d clean his house and sleep on the door step. I might need some crackers and water. But I’m good for it...

http://typophile.com/node/13190 ... Hmm... Wink Wink.

You can get Federal Student Loans to study in Britain. The University of Reading seems to have the best course (the one year MA Type Design program) in type design around…

There is another program in the Hague. That is about it for real [post-graduate] education in Type Design.

__
www.typeoff.de

The in deep knowlege of type design was from the beginnig till today a secret & mystic thing. Dont underestimate the mystic part for the outsiders - the customers.

—astype.de—

>>You can get Federal Student Loans to study in Britain. The University of Reading seems to have the best course (the one year MA Type Design program) in type design around…

How do you do that Dan? I was thinking of doing this, but couldn’t find any affordable ways to do so. I went up to the school in April because I was thinking of applying for a fellowship there.

What also of those who already have Master’s Degrees?

How do you do that Dan?
I went to Germany instead of Britain for graduate study. So I don’t know the details. But all the Brit-catalogs that I saw made it sound like a total paperwork thing. Many had a specific page for American students. I think that Grad. Students can take ouy $7,500/year in subsidized loans, and up to $18,500 in subsidized + unsubsidized. Britain is very expensive for students who are American citizens.

What also of those who already have Master’s Degrees?
I don’t have any graduate degrees. But one can always get another Master’s Degree ;-)

__
www.typeoff.de

>Britain is very expensive for students who are American citizens.
You can say that again. When I was in London a couple of months on a sort of type related vacation (yes, I’m that big of a nerd) I discovered how difficult and expensive studying abroad could actually be for Americans.

>But one can always get another Master’s Degree ;-)
Indeed. :)

Not sure why I’m part of the incantation of this item’s title, but hey — I’ll give it a shot!

>it seems to me that type design is like 007. top secret

Annoying, isn’t it? I suspect this is because typefounding has its roots in the guild tradition, in which master craftsmen were deeply reluctant to share their trade secrets. (There’s an anecdote about young Joseph Jackson, apprenticed to William Caslon, learning his trade by boring a hole through the master’s wall; this sums it up.) Christopher Plantin’s “Dialogues,” which purport to explain type design to the lay public, are riddled with intentional errors (though the book is still a good read), and Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” is similarly oblique by design.

There are a lot of personal monographs about lettering, even more about typefounding, but only occasional writings about typeface design that are really on point. I really like Fred Smeijers books, “Counterpunch” especially (it’s a farrago of ideas, every bit as thoughtful, inventive and thorough as Fred himself), but it’s not really a manual about how to design fonts. Gerrit Noordzij’s books are also great, of which “Letterletter” may be the one that’s of greatest practical use to someone wanting to learn how to design typefaces. You can generally find Dwiggins’ things through inter-library loan, and both “WAD to RR: A letter about designing type” and “Layout in Advertising” (ignore the misleading title) offer some genuine insights.

> is there a chance that you and other type designers
> will develop a deep course about type design

A lot of type designers do teach courses on type design. Tobias Frere-Jones and Matthew Carter co-teach an excellent class in the Yale MFA program, and I’m always impressed by the students’ output: more than just drawing good letters, they really learn to develop the kind of clarity of purpose that makes a good typeface. Cyrus Highsmith teaches a type design class at RISD, Erik van Blokland teaches at KABK in The Hague, and Gerry Leonidas runs an outstanding program in Reading — we’ve hired type designers out of all of these programs. If you’re interested in type design and thinking about going back to school, I’d really encourage you to talk to one of these folks about their programs.

A lot of type designers also participate in workshops. Jean-François Porchez leads workshops in a variety of places, and the guys from Underware host a travelling workshop that looks every bit as exciting as their fonts are. Most accessibly, many type conferences have a parallel “hands-on” track in which accomplished type designers teach their specialties. (This year’s TypeCon in New York has everyone from John Downer to Ken Barber teaching a workshop — go.) At Type-90 in Oxford, I got to embarass myself in both Fud Benson’s stonecutting class and John Downer’s gold leaf workshop, and I learned quite a lot in the process.

> As a side note...

Eric, we’ve already got a nice housekeeper at the office, and since we’re in SoHo it’s safe to assume that there’s already someone sleeping on the doorstep. But if you’re ever interested in working here, feel free to drop me a line. We don’t have any openings right now, but if you’d like to send a resume or some work to careers(a)typography.com, I’d be happy to check it out.

“Not sure why I’m part of the incantation of this item’s title, but hey — I’ll give it a shot!”

well not every day I have the chance to talk to you; i don’t mind to ask Matthew Carter couple things — if he’s here.
(so if one of you - the type designers - is with touch with Matthew Carter — please ask to pay a visit.)

thanks for the books, Jonathan. i just ordered two of them (amazon). you see — since you’re “part of the incantation of this item’s title” I gained something today.

“Of course, east coast / west coast folks would be the lucky ones.”

why is that? we are not a global village , but a global room. let’s start something online — here, Typophile.

Maybe the original question is the germ for an online discussion - one which would no doubt be very educational. While it’s true there are several sources for education in typeface design, I think Typophile is a perfect forum for asking certain questions....

Parker’s first question may be the hardest to answer. Let’s try. Isn’t there a relationship between #1 and #2? The anecdotes about red herrings in typefounders’ lessons give a clue.

Jonathan mentions “clarity of purpose”.... How’s that for an interesting opener? What does he mean? His comments reveal an understanding of type in context, which may rarely be discussed in these forums. Type can’t exist without context. Is this mysterious?

Parker...

Yes, Typophile is an amazing source for learning, although some things just need to be hands on.

eric

Eric - i can see your smile. be nice and say thank you.

“type can’t exist without context. Is this mysterious?”

i didn’t say that type can exist without context — or the right word: culture. and culture is about people, history (and history isn’t just a number or date), movies, books, music etc etc etc.

“clarity of purpose”

Coming from the fine arts camp (as I’m sure many of us do) there was much discussion in my painting/drawing crits about the “wholeness” of a piece. The term hints at an idea of “completion” without the definitive concept of “the end”.

I think the same goes for type design. A typeface is never “finished.” Rather, it reaches a point in its development when it is ready to be used and applied and appreciated; when the designer sees his/her intention fulfilled in physicality and ready to be shared.

“Clarity of purpose”, as I understand it, would be the investment and transparency of the inner logic of a typeface... a state of wholeness that appeases the assessment of a trained eye.

Perhaps there are elements of biography and history to be added to it as well, but at the level of craftsmanship, these factors may be negligible.

>Clarity of purpose:

A font is a physical entity, part artefact, part tool.
A typeface is more than that.

A typeface contains an innate physical quality, a syntactic vocabulary of interacting elements: contrast, stress, proportion, color, curve-type, serif style, finish, etc. These construct the personality of the typeface, which is further expressed in the craftsmanship of the font. When all these are strong and work together, there is synergy, and a clarity of purpose.

Once a typeface has been used sufficiently (however that is defined) in the culture, it becomes a collective archetype: everyone knows what the “Bodoni” quality is, for instance.
When people see a typeface used in fitting ways, for certain kinds of work, with perhaps the authority of certain typographers or typographic schools channeling it towards specific kinds of settings (one thinks of Interstate bold condensed, in newspapers), that becomes a justification, a confirmation of the original clarity of purpose.

Successful design is purposeful; everything is there for a reason.
Typefaces that are casually derived from others, either by tracing scans or re-using bezier paths (and metrics) lack purpose, because the re-worker is merely repeating shapes (like mouthing a foreign language phonetically) and has little concept of the underlying syntax and vocabulary, of why it looks the way it does, of what it means.

Jonathan Hoefler wrote:
(There’s an anecdote about young Joseph Jackson, apprenticed to William Caslon, learning his trade by boring a hole through the master’s wall; this sums it up.)

This story is also mentioned in Fred Smeijers’ second book, Type Now.

“clarity of purpose”

I took this a bit more literally. I assumed Hoefler meant developing a clear reasoning for the why the type is being designed, to articulate ’this is what I want this face to do, and this is how it’ll do it’. That clarity then guides the other, more ephemeral, creative, elusive, “top secret” aspects.

Perhaps?

Well. I will share what I know ..
1.You may have one of these books: Typography by Emil Ruder ( I think it is better for modern typographers) Or Typoraphy by Otl Aicher. Both books are giving good background about letters and type design princpels.

2.You may study simple relations between gemotrical shapes.. by studying the instruction manuals of Roman font, caroline.

3.Collect sketches for letters done by famouse classic designers and try to copy them and reform them in big scaled “grid” till you creat your own grid system which contains your own porportions.

Otl Aicher’s Typography has some serious flaws to it. Sadly, the only real critique of the book that I know of is in German, in Hans Peter Wilberg’s Typolemik.
__
www.typeoff.de

Yes I heard about that. but I don’t have detailed information like you have. ~smiles~ .. I personaly prefer Emil Roder’s Typography. But I guess some people still like Otl Aicher’s Typography. Thank you for telling me about Wilberg’s typolemik. I have to search for it.

I think Ruder’s book does contain some useful stuff, but in its own design (I mean the trilingual original) epitomizes what’s so wrong with Modernism: the gray uniformity prevents a person from easily finding his language! And this issue is relevant to Arabic btw, in its need to tame Latinization.

In contrast, Aicher’s book contains something more valuable to be: original, purposeful thinking.

hhp

Good point. I was just recommending Ruder’s or Otl Aicher’s because both are good examples for methods in Typography, our friend who is new in designing letters may have some useful information from any of books. But I just prefer Roder’s because he is more into modern typo. For Arabic Typography I don’t use any methods but I just use some from that and some from this because I sat up my own method. you know

I’m sorry for the post, I forgot “where” I was. :-/

hhp

I wouldn’t recommend Otl Aicher’s Typography for the mechanics of type design. As Hrant mentioned, Aicher book is really more about being creative humans.

He was quite passionate about his design theories, therefore in his writing there was much supposition and conjecture. But as a teacher, he was inspirational as well as controversial. Remember, his roots were deep in creating corporate identities and the development of glyph/symbols as language.

His feelings for type designers was based less on the craft and more about ideas:

A dialogue is constantly in progress with great typographers from the past such as Garamond, Bodoni, Baskerville, Walbaum, and with the great typographers of today such as Gill, Morison or Frutiger. Not on the account of their reputations but because of their theoretical contributions.
typographie
otl aicher

——————————————————————
Yes, I’m old, and glad I worked with Aicher!

No ur talk was nice really.. It was good to learn ur opinion which is useful for my side. most talk here in this forum is very useful really because of the quality of people who talk here

Mr.Norbert Florendo: Did you really work with Otl Aicher’s? WOW!
Well I like the way that Aicher’s trying to think and use his head even he made some falls but you all don’t say anything good in his book, was it that bad?.. I was just giving his book title away of 2 books addresses because I think some designers of fonts still found that book even a good start. For me again, I prefer Emil Roder’s book as a START not as the end .. then to get sketshes and read theories should come togather but I recommend our friend to see alot of sketches and manual gemotrical fonts to learn by watching. What do you think about that?
I want to ask you a question btw, for modern typographers, What do you think about Neville Brody?

Yes, while I was an employee of Agfa, I did work with Otl Aicher during the late 1980s to assist in the release and marketing of the Rotis typeface family. We worked both at Druckhaus Maack in Lüdenscheid, and at Aicher’s studio compound (farm houses) in Rotis.

The last time I saw Otl Aicher was in Paris for Agfa’s official international press event for the debut of Rotis.

Mr. Aicher graciously gave me signed first additions of two of his books, typographie and Rotis.

His book typographie remains inspirational for me but less about typefaces and more about the nature of creative thought and intellectual skepticism.

——————————————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but so what!

Norbert,
Did you also know Peter Megert from Bern? I met him when we worked at Westinghouse. He used to send his annual calendar (done in Rotis).

ChrisL

I’m sitting here looking at my now very yellowed copy of Ruder’s book (purchased in 1967). It is now one of my “old type books”—strange concept to me because at the tiime it represented new typography to me. I have no problem finding my language among the three and the even grey is no more even than any other book in print. Having said that, I hope I have not reopened the wounds created by the dreaded Modernism. I can check back on the many threads where various folks wizzed on each others shoes on either side of the Moderism/anti-Modernism battle so there won’t be any need to revisit that again here.

ChrisL

Ruder’s book sums up an era for me. I think that it is safe to say that without having to thrash out the good and the bad of modernism in general.

__
www.typeoff.de

Did you also know Peter Megert from Bern?

No, Chris, I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Megert, though I did spend time in both Bern and St. Gallen meeting designers and typographers.

———————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but I’m back in style!

Did i ever say why not to make an online workshop?

Mr.Norbert Florendo: It is very great career. I am very glad to know you, and I hope u accept me as a friend one day.

I wonder what that would take. Some kind of virtual desktop display + a couple cameras set up in work areas you could switch between on the fly. Quicktime coupled with chat? or maybe a video chat, iChat does that right?

That actually sounds feasible. hmmmm...

OR chat platform which make us able to share bitmaps, pdf documents some how