• San Francisco 2007 summer class:Type Synthesis 1

Type Synthesis is a graduate class that I teach at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco-California. It is organized to give a historical foundation as well as an experimental approach to new typography. The course is divided in two sections that are carried on simultaneously giving time, within one lesson,  to both projects or alternatively one class for project 1, one class for project 2.

Project 1 regards the study of Roman Capital Letters. Students are required to study a number books, included The Origin of the Serif by E.M.Catich, Font by Sumner Stone and a study of skeletal forms and Roman Capitals spacing from Monica Dengo correspondence course. The students are required to draw freely the 19 forms from rubbings of the Trajan Column, to compare them with the font Trajan by Carol Twombly, to draw their skeletal forms, write them and space them free hand, to do a study of their proportion in relation to the golden rectangle and finally to design a book with all the gathered information and studies.

I have taught this course many times and it is one of the most successful in creating a link between the history of letterforms and the contemporary use of type and space.

Images curtesy of Harim Lee and Lang Lee.