“…typography which is to be understood as writing with prefabricated characters.”
Gerrit Noordzij, “The Art of Quibbling”, Letterletter (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2000)
“Not only does each letter of a word have a shape of its own, but all its letters taken together give shape to the word.”
Bruno Munari, “The Shape of Words,” Design as Art (London: Pelican, 1971)
Christopher Wool, Untitled, 2007
Project 1: Characters
Three weeks
In this assignment we will not exactly work on typography, or lettering, or a typeface, but on something more elementary, more fundamental: an alphabet. Or not even necessarily an alphabet, but a finite set of shapes with set parameters from which letters can be derived. A system for reordering, for play, for imagination, for interpretation.
Parameters
— 26 letters A–Z
— 10 numerals 0–9
— Basic punctuation
Learning Objectives
— Critically analyzing relationships between writing and type, images and letters, shapes and words
— Exploring consistency and flexibility with modular systems
— Experimenting with typographic forms, compositions, and media
— Considering the anthropometric relationship between writer, typographer, and reader
— Collaborative editing, composing, printing, and publishing
Sequence
1. Research, analyse and present analysis of existing matrix system
2. Create a system (a stencil, or a dot matrix, or a grid, &c.) from which the whole alphabet (A–Z) and numerals (0–9) can be derived.
3. Randomly assign each student with another’s system
4. Typeset a one sentence statement using the assigned system (the result can be printed/animated/projected/physical/spatial, as appropriate)
5. Collectively edit and design a class publication documenting the project and results
6. Print publication on Riso stencil printer, bind, distribute
Timeline
Week 2 September 14
— Presentations of research
— Stencil/matrix system in progress
Week 3 September 21
— Review completed systems
— Reassign systems to fellow students for typographic composition
Week 4 September 28
— Review typographic compositions
— Gather, edit, compose, design, print
— Riso print workshop
Week 1
Lecture: The Whole Alphabet (PDF, 77mb, includes captions and links to all videos)
Readings
- Michèle Champagne, “Handwriting in an Era of Glitter Text Generators,” The Gradient, Walker Art Center, July 18, 2017
- Eric Kindel, “Between Writing & Type: the Stencil Letter”, in Kindel, Fred Smeijers (eds.) Between Writing & Type: the Stencil Letter (Antwerp: Our Type/Catapult, 2012). See also Erick Kindel, “Type Tuesday: Between writing & type,” Eye Blog, 15 May 2012
Week 2
Readings
- Paul Elliman, “My Typographies,” Eye 27, Spring 1998
- Tauba Auerbach, “(P)(E)(R)(S)(E)(V)(E)(R)(E),” Bulletins of the Serving Library, May 20, 2017
Week 3
Readings
- Bruno Munari, “The Shape of Words,” Design as Art (London: Pelican, 1971)
Further Reading
- Florian Hardwig, Thomas Maier, “From Lettering Guides to CNC Plotters — A Brief History of Technical Lettering Tools,” Typotheque, 15 January 2017
- History of Display Technology, Wikipedia
- Eric Kindel, “A tradition with breaks”, Eye 86, Autumn 2013
- Eric Kindel, “Recollecting Stencil Letters”, Typography Papers 5 (Reading: Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, The University of Reading, 2003)
- Eric Kindel, “The ‘Plaque Découpée Universelle’: a geometric sanserif in 1870s Paris”, Typography Papers 7 (London: Hyphen Press, 2007)
- John Morgan, “Common ground: a designer’s letter from Venice”, Eye Blog, 1 November 2012
- Bruno Munari, “The Shape of Words,” Design as Art (London: Pelican, 1971)
- Ferdinand Ulrich, “Stencil alphabets: Interrupted strokes and divided shapes,” FontShop Blog, March 09, 2016
- Klaus Zhang, “The Pulsar: A Revolution in Display Technology,” The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Fall 2010