I Heart Type

Word As Image

theoriginalecs — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:52:35 -0500

This on-going project is very similar to what my Type 1 students tackle in the first half of the semester!

Fall 2012 Student Projects

theoriginalecs — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:06:11 -0500

These will be available to pick up starting next Tuesday. I’ll leave them in the EDM offices, so just arrange a time with me (via email: esmith@ccny.cuny.edu).

CO-LAB Update

theoriginalecs — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:48:14 -0500

There is now a wait list for CO-LAB. The best way to ensure your spot is to leave your deposit no later than February 1st in my mailbox. The first 20 people who emailed have spots tentatively held until then, but after that, spots are first come, first serve.

CO-LAB RSVP Details

theoriginalecs — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:33:00 -0500

There are still about 8 spots open for CO-LAB. To RSVP, please email hello@theletteroffice.com and bring a $40 deposit via cash or check by February 1st. You can leave it in my mailbox in the Art Department Office at City College. The deposit will go toward the budget for supplies and printing (!!!)

A little teaser: I have priced out some printing options, and CO-LAB participants can expect to get at least a couple of copies of our final publication, which will be professionally printed and bound.

More details have been worked out, but I’ll wait til we have a final list of participants before posting them. It’s going to be amazing!

P.S. Alumni ARE welcome to participate, so please spread the word to anyone you think would be interested.

Presenting: CO-LAB

theoriginalecs — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:38:49 -0500

CO-LAB is a two-day intensive graphic design workshop being held Saturday and Sunday, March 2nd and 3rd. (Location TBD)

Designed for EDM students who are looking to develop new skills in collaboration with a renegade, all-hands-on-deck spirit, this workshop promises to deliver fresh ways of thinking and making.

CO-LAB will be led by Professor Elizabeth Carey Smith of The Letter Office — also a City College EDM adjunct faculty member with a special obsession with type. Participants will craft an ambitious project in two days, learning from each other and instructor alike. Each participant will leave with a copy of the project that will distinguish their portfolios.

Watch this space for further updates about the nature of the project, what to expect on the weekend, how to prepare, and what space we’ll occupy.

For questions or to RSVP, please contact Elizabeth at hello@theletteroffice.com.

Type 2 • Fall 2012Student: Roberto GuzmanProject: Create the...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:54:43 -0500

Type 2 • Fall 2012
Student: Roberto Guzman
Project: Create the content and design a tourist guide for a neighborhood of your choosing within NYC’s five boroughs.
Goals: Establish a strong grid, demonstrate excellence in typographic hierarchy, design information graphics to facilitate the user’s experience in the neighborhood, create dynamic and user-friendly pacing and structure.

Type 2 • Fall 2012Student: Michael BennettProject: Create the...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:32:09 -0500

Type 2 • Fall 2012
Student: Michael Bennett
Project: Create the content and design a tourist guide for a neighborhood of your choosing within NYC’s five boroughs.
Goals: Establish a strong grid, demonstrate excellence in typographic hierarchy, design information graphics to facilitate the user’s experience in the neighborhood, create dynamic and user-friendly pacing and structure.

Type 2 • Fall 2012Student: Kimberly LumProject: Create the...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:26:09 -0500

Type 2 • Fall 2012
Student: Kimberly Lum
Project: Create the content and design a tourist guide for a neighborhood of your choosing within NYC’s five boroughs.
Goals: Establish a strong grid, demonstrate excellence in typographic hierarchy, design information graphics to facilitate the user’s experience in the neighborhood, create dynamic and user-friendly pacing and structure.

Type 2 • Fall 2012Student: Jeffrey LouieProject: Create the...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:22:18 -0500

Type 2 • Fall 2012
Student: Jeffrey Louie
Project: Create the content and design a tourist guide for a neighborhood of your choosing within NYC’s five boroughs.
Goals: Establish a strong grid, demonstrate excellence in typographic hierarchy, design information graphics to facilitate the user’s experience in the neighborhood, create dynamic and user-friendly pacing and structure.

Type 1 • Fall 2012Student: Robert MorrissetteProject: Process...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:14:49 -0500

Type 1 • Fall 2012
Student: Robert Morrissette
Project: Process book for a series of 16 typographic compositions, exploring scale, weight, legibility, the figure-ground relationship, density, and eliciting a specific emotion

Type 1 • Fall 2012Student: Jorge OlivaresProject: Process book...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:13:14 -0500

Type 1 • Fall 2012
Student: Jorge Olivares
Project: Process book for a series of 16 typographic compositions, exploring scale, weight, legibility, the figure-ground relationship, density, and eliciting a specific emotion

Type 1 • Fall 2012Student: Jonathan MelgarProject: Process book...

theoriginalecs — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:08:05 -0500

Type 1 • Fall 2012
Student: Jonathan Melgar
Project: Process book for a series of 16 typographic compositions, exploring scale, weight, legibility, the figure-ground relationship, density, and eliciting a specific emotion

Cooper Type, Class of 2012 {Extended Program}

theoriginalecs — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 08:27:14 -0400

With a mixture of insane relief and sentimentality, it is my pleasure to say that I’ve finished Type@Cooper. My classmates and I rounded out the three terms with a letterpress workshop and printed roughly 70 individual specimens as well as a group poster. I’m very happy with the results, though Brightcut still requires a lot more work.

Below are the slides from my final presentation, given the last day of class.

Wings

theoriginalecs — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:05:00 -0400

As the to-do list for Cooper Type accomplishments gets shorter, I’m having more and more thoughts about my experience as a whole in the Type@Cooper program.

I’m putting together my final presentation, which is supposed to show not just the original typeface, but also the revival and initial lettering project. It also highlights some of the workshops — I’ve mentioned before how incredible those are and how they really add to the T@C cred. I’ll probably post some of those slides next week with a larger, conclusive post, but for now I wanted to touch on a couple of things that have struck me.

I’ve never delved so far into a subject as I have with type, so it’s hard to compare with other passionate pursuits, but I’ve talked a bit lately with some other classmates about where we go from here. It occurred to me today, as I look at my earlier projects and now with a much more finely-tuned criticism at Brightcut, that I could take Type @ Cooper all over again and still get just as much out of it. Every aspect of the program was — while being well-structured — open enough to have travelled many courses.

What if I had chosen to revive a Niebolo face instead of a 19th-century ATF acquisition? What if I’d drawn a translational, high-contrast serif in Hannes Famira’s Design Space workshop? What if I’d made an historical interpretation of Roman capitals after taking Sumner Stone’s workshop? What if I’d designed for optical sizes as we learned in John Downer’s? And that’s to say nothing of the fact that many of the workshop instructors vary their subjects from year to year, so the possibilities truly are endless.

It’s not to say that I don’t have 4 zillion type-related tasks lined up now that I know what I know. I’ve got ideas for new typefaces, different skills for lettering, and larger, clearer ideas about what I want my career to be, all thanks to Cooper Type. But we are baby birds getting pushed out of the nest now, and at least in the case of type design, there are not a lot of other nests to perch in, just a lot more baby birds.

Hinting!

theoriginalecs — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:19:41 -0400

Interpolation!

theoriginalecs — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:11:23 -0400

Brightcut Book, Black, and a 50% interpolated Bold:

Photo

theoriginalecs — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:43:04 -0400

Week 9, aka Week 29/30

theoriginalecs — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:25:10 -0400

After going to the eye doctor on Thursday I am now allowed to blame any and all weight inconsistencies on my worsening astigmatism. This past week of constant, constant, constant work has been brutal. But some good things are coming out of it.

A more consistent italic:

New numbers!

A hella revised black weight:

More to come…

Font Triage / Check-in / Week 8

theoriginalecs — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:18:00 -0400

We are sending off the files to get plates made to print our specimens Monday. That means that I have to do quite a lot of the things on the list above before then, to get my fonts looking as good as possible. The following weekend, we have our letterpress workshop with the awesome Dan Morris from The Arm in the ol’ Cooper Union type shop. We’ll be printing both our individual specimens and our group poster, and we will have shows at the TDC as well as the Lubalin Center. Holy eff.

I have neither the time nor brain capacity to explain what is going on with Brightcut. Also, I don’t know what the hell is going on with it. Fellow CooperTyper Blake Olmstead put it so succinctly last night after class in this analogy: “it’s like I had to rush home and change, and just grab things and put them on and this is what I’m wearing” — in other words, we see all these little details that feel TERRIBLE to us, but that other people probably won’t even notice (or WILL THEY??)

Following a critique with Jean-Francois Porchez last week, I redrew my roman a, redrew my bold (the point structure needed to match the roman in order to interpolate, and hopefully I’ll get another weight out of this…?), and made 2 attempts to find a new italic for this face. Ultimately, the time I spent drawing control characters with both of those attempts were a waste of time. I went back to a file three weeks old, because the reality was that it was the only italic I liked. Also, I like it. Also, 2 weeks.

Please send good vibes.

More Notes from the EVB / JVR Critique

theoriginalecs — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:31:49 -0400

One of the most stellar things about the Type @ Cooper program is the guest critiques. Our typographic idols eagerly and intimately assess our fledgling work while we try to contain our flattery. But being starstruck is of course only a superficial side-effect. What we’re really undergoing is a reality check.

In my many years now of being part of critiques, I’ve found that if I’m not taking notes on what my critics are pointing out, then the only things I take away are the criticisms that resonated because I was (quietly, secretly) already aware of them. Will anyone notice that my counterforms don’t jive with the letterspace? Of course they will!

So it wasn’t a surprise to me, per se, when the Dutch Dream Team (©2012 Jesse Ragan all rights reserved) said, “your roman deserves an italic that matches it, and your italic deserves a matching roman.” Well, shit. I was hoping no one would care that they are so completely different because they are both kinda nice to look at. But it does bear consideration, even if it’s not something I can assess in the four weeks left of the program.

Other things they threw out there, that are a bit more manageable:

ROMAN WEIGHT:

Christian pointed out last term that perhaps my sidebearings around my round characters were too loose. I did play with that a lot. But what I should have done simultaneously is adjust the straights. EVB and JVR, AKA the DDT, brought this up again. I am often willfully lazy and un-thorough. A simple fix, I think, and it’s already looking a lot better:

Now let’s look at how this whole thing is looking together:

Yeaaahhhh…. So the ‘black’ weight (I have finally successfully interpolated, for learning’s sake only; I think most of it actually needs to be redrawn to result in better, stronger characters) was best described by JVR as “still the biggest work in progress”. I haven’t spent a great deal of time thinking about the bold, and once I realized the nature of interpolation — a finicky process of ensuring that the point structures between the two weights are compatible — I realized I’d have been better off drawing my bold using the roman as a template rather than drawing it from scratch. So I’ve already started doing that, and actually I don’t think it will take much time. There are certainly issues with increasing the weight drastically of the roman, but it’s a lot more straightforward than other concerns. Like this italic…

I’ve gotten nice feedback about the italic, and while I have modified some things to improve it, and I think the spirit of it fits with the roman, it really is quite different.

Changes: the structure of the entrance and exit strokes, overall weight increased slightly to better match color of roman

EVB noted that it got too far away from the roman because I changed too many things — it’s narrower, it’s lighter, it has entrance and exit strokes, it’s curvier, the slant is extreme — when really I could have made an italic changing only one of those things with other very slight modifications.

I wonder if I’d just gotten to a point (senioritis!) where I needed to draw something different. Graphic designers are used to more instant gratification than type designers.

I’m going to do what I can. Between teaching, freelance, on-site work, and a toddler, I don’t want to lose the momentum or enthusiasm for my work at Cooper Type, but I do tend to do crazy shit to Brightcut in the late night hours.