Category: Education
-
Otto Kaestner’s brass type foundry: A lettering zine
Although Germany had dozens of typefoundries in the early 20th century, none were based in the Lower Rhine region. Once the Düsseldorf branch of Bauer & Co. was closed in 1899, area printers would have had to order their types from more distant parts of the country: from Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, the Rhine-Main area, or…
Written by
-
Blackletter signage in the Berlin S-Bahn
Figure 1: Diagram of the lowercase “e” construction from the so-called Reichsbahnschrift design. HTW Berlin students Aleksej M. and Ronak J. drew this as part of their three-poster series explaining the blackletter alphabets found on various signs in Berlin’s S-Bahn train network today. Earlier this month, I lead a week-long workshop for third-semester communications design students…
Written by
-
Information zu BK 45 Kurzzeitentwurf 1
This month, I’m organizing a short course for communications design students at the HTW Berlin. The following materials are for their reference. I have a general page with a recommended reading list for my students elsewhere on this site, which includes more English-language titles than appear here. Kursvorstellung Hier noch mal eine Kurzbeschreibung des Kurses,…
Written by
-
Very brief overview of typefounding – as well as calligraphy, lettering, and type design education – in Leipzig between 1903 and 1914
Above: Image of the J.G. Schelter & Giesecke typefoundry’s factory building at Brüderstraße 26/28, circa 1894. The firm was one of the largest players in Leipzig type history. Reproduced from Typografie.info. This past April, I was invited to the Typotage 2018 at the Museum für Druckkunst Leipzig. The conference organizers asked me to speak about typefaces designed…
Written by
-
Darmstadt workshop, April 2015
I have been teaching type design off-and-on at the Hochschule Darmstadt since 2009. Sometimes I offer semester-long courses there, other times I come in for a week or two straight. I almost never put the results together in any sort of final presentations, though. This April, I was in town for another six-day workshop. I…
Written by
-
Course reading lists
When I started teaching in 2009, I prepared a two-page list with recommended reading to distribute to my students. Updating that PDF with additional typography books eventually became a minor pain, so I moved my lists online. Even lists on the Internet require work, though: this is version 6, from October 5, 2018. The lists…
Written by
-
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…
Written by
-
Darmstadt type design update
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…
Written by
-
Fiona Ross & Jo de Baerdemaeker in Kolkata
I don’t know when the semi-secret Reading MATD blog Emayteedee stopped being a secret. Perhaps it was when its feed was added to Alltop’s Typography section. Or perhaps in the age of Google, nothing online is a secret anymore anyway. But since the blog first appeared last year, I was always wary of linking to…
Written by
-
One more MATD ’08 post…
A little over a week and a half ago, I flew to England for one of the University of Reading’s graduation ceremonies. I arrived in the country on Thursday night at London City Airport, which is a delightfully small airport for a big place like London. It takes about three minutes to go through passport…
Written by
-
Bibliography for Devanagari information
A few requests have come in over the past few months from designers wanting to know where to turn to learn more about Indic scripts. Below is the bibliography from my MA dissertation at the University of Reading, a view of Hindi newspapers and their typefaces. Maybe some of these books or articles will prove…
Written by
-
Reading’s typefaces of 2008
Although our program isn’t over yet, the typefaces designed by the students on this year’s MA Typeface Design course at the University of Reading are now online for all to see. Visit typefacedesign.org, where PDF specimens of our typefaces may be viewed and be downloaded. In addition to our own work, we’ve prepared a 16-page…
Written by
-
Reading postcard for TypeCon 2008
Paul and Gerry were at TypeCon over the weekend and were able to bring back a few of the MATD 2007–2008 postcards. During the week before our typeface submission deadline, we put this little postcard together. It was printed in New York and shipped to Buffalo for the conference goodie bags. For now, it’s the…
Written by
-
Typeface submitted
Monday July 7th was the submission deadline here in Reading, and I uploaded my files about an hour or so before the noon requirement. The typeface, pictured rather briefly above, will still need ages of finishing before I could call it properly complete, but I guess that I am proud anyway. Here are the details:…
Written by