Course reading lists
Next week, three classes of mine will begin. Over the last couple of years, I’ve handed out a two-page list of books I recommend to students, or e-mailed a PDF around. Updating these has always been a minor pain, so I am moving the lists online.
This post isn’t a definitive list of books on the typographic subjects; it is not as good or as complete as longer lists I’ve seen compiled by Gerry Leonidas or James Mosley, for instance. I like my list a little better than Type Library’s list; but mainly because, well, this is my list. I recommend the series of book lists at Typefacts, too. There aren’t any general graphic design texts below, though, as my course offerings at the moment are rather specific.
I teach in Germany and expect all of my students read both English and German at a high level. There is no preference toward one language or another on my list. If a title has been translated from English into German, I try to mention both editions. On occasion, I have students who can also read Dutch, French, Russian, or other languages; there are excellent resources available in these, but I cannot read them (yet).
TypeOff.de is not currently involved in any affiliate programs, over Amazon or otherwise. Links to Amazon.de are listed as a convenience; feel free to purchase books wherever you like. For my own shopping, I search for out-of-print books via used.addall.com. If you live within travelling-distance of Berlin, I recommend purchasing books in person from the Mota Italic Gallery & Boutique, on Schliemannstraße 34 in Prenzlauer-Berg. Several of these books will be available in your university libraries, too.
There are books that I do not find particularly good, of course, and these books are not on my list. However, lack of inclusion on this list is not per se the opposite of an endorsement.
May 2011 Burg Halle workshop
From May 9–13, 2011, I took a week’s vacation to conduct a type design workshop at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule in Halle. It was an honor to be invited, and I was glad to go. A number of friends of acquaintances of mine have studied design in Halle, like Nina Stössinger and Roman Wilhelm. Both Alessio Leonardi and Severin Wücher taught at the school recently. The school has a long typographic tradition: Herbert Post, one of Rudolf Koch’s Offenbach students, joined the school’s staff in 1926; he remained in Halle until fleeing from the GDR to West, in 1950. The workshop was made possible by Andrea Tinnes, professor for lettering and typography in Halle. It was Andrea who invited me the school, showed me around Halle, and planned out the week perfectly. I couldn’t have imagined a better short teaching experience.
My goal was was to tie into the Halle tradition a little bit with my workshop. I have it the title, Schriftgestaltung anfangen!, which means something like, “start designing type!” However, I was pleased to see that several of the students already begun just doing that earlier on in the studies, and so had some interesting experience with type design, calligraphy, or lettering. Before the week began, I emailed all of the participants, and asked them to go out into the streets of Halle and make photos of signage lettering. They should especially focus on older signs – be they painted, made of neon, cut out of metal, or carved into stone. The older the sign, the less likely it was to be based on a specific printing typeface.
On the workshop’s first morning, the students picked their favorite images. Over the course of the week, students vectorized these letters in FontLab Studio, FontStruct, or Illustrator. Then they drew additional letters, to match the outlines they already had. While very few students in the class had much prior experience with FontLab Studio, almost everyone was using it by the end of the week. Some students learned in the in’s and out’s of the program faster than I thought possible.
Side Notes
In addition to my ongoing design projects – and my work and research in Braunschweig – I’ll be in Darmstadt once a week October–February, too. For the fifth time, I’ve been invited to teach an intro to type design course at the Hochschule Darmstadt. This semester, it will be two classes; the same course repeated back-to-back, due to the extremely high-level of student interest in the topic.
Thomas Phinney wrote to me once that, “offering a course type design in Darmstadt is like going to Jerusalem to teach religion.” This may indeed be so; to walk down the path a little bit, my students and I will spend our semester looking into more of Darmstadt’s typographic tradition. We’ll be visiting the rare books department of the TU Darmstadt library, where the Kleukens Collection is housed. And of course, we will also pay another visit to Haus für Industriekultur, to look at Monotype matrices and freshly-cast metal type fonts from the old Stempel and Haas foundries.
Mota Italic’s Rob Keller just informed me of the launch of a small new web project called Type in Berlin. The site states that, “Berlin is the current type capital of the world with more type designers and foundries than anywhere else. There is always something type-related going on or some new local announcement.” Keep tabs on the site for news about all Berlin type goings-on, or to see an up-to-date list of all the type designers and foundries currently in the German capital. I recommend following Type in Berlin on Twitter, too – @typeinberlin
I’m almost afraid to admit it. Several months ago, I ordered a copy of the UK first edition of Simon Garfield’s Just My Type. I read it rather quickly, and even enjoyed some of it, although the amount of factual errors and oversights in the text was completely maddening. Paul Shaw has written up a review of the book’s failings better than anyone else probably could; if there were an option print out his article to sign like a petition, I would do so.
Nevertheless, I got an e-mail last week about a podcast from the Copyright Clearance Center. Despite the odd-sounding name, the message led me to an interesting 20-minute interview with Simon Garfield. You can listen to it here – http://beyondthebookcast.com/just-my-type
Nice moments in the interview include a story about how Helvetica (the film) inspired Just My Type. It is also swell to learn about just how much Garfield likes Helvetica (the typeface). Unfortunately, the not-true story about Cyrus Highsmith’s “day without Helvetica” is repeated. The same page that I link to above has a crazy, minute-long animation advertising the US edition of the book, put together by Penguin USA; the film is worth a look. Without spoiling too much, it shows the compound word “JustMyType” in a whole lot of different typefaces.
I love Chris Herron Design’s recent rebranding of Hell. You know, Hell-as-in-the-oppposite-of-Heaven. Without getting all nit-picky, I need to point out that Mr. Herron seems to have one or two of the facts on his research timeline wrong. As is surely no surprise to most TypeOff.-readers, Hell went through a rebranding in 1990, as the result of an acquisition. At that time, they changed their 1980s name and logo from this to this.
I’ve been trying to pick up my blogging tempo over the past few weeks. In addition to new stuff here on TypeOff., I been writing posts elsewhere, too. You can check out my Interview with Doug Wilson from Typo Berlin as well as a bit about a 1961 BBC radio broadcast on Eric Gill; these are each up on Linotype’s Blog. At Ghostarmy, I have a round-up of the Mota Italic Gallery’s second exhibition, Type Masters.
