 My name is Karen Chang and I'm a professor of visual communication design at the University of Washington in Seattle and I've been teaching a class in type design on and off for the last 18 years. So these are some of the display boards that students make to show their final typeface. So it's generally just one weight and one style, although the student did make two weights. It was pretty easy for him to do because you can see there's no curves to this typeface. So you have to make two weights. So I generally let students pursue any design idea that they want within reason. Okay, so these are just some of the examples. So when I've taught the class this way, it's generally pretty small, just six to twelve students or so. But we've had increasing interest and a change in our curriculum, so I've been trying to figure out how to teach it to a bigger class. Not the full 60 students you see here. This is our design sophomores, but about half of them, a class of 30. So I wasn't sure how to do that. So I want to give credit to this fellow. This is the French designer Jean-François Porchez because he's the one who really showed me how it could be done with larger groups. I had the honor of hosting Jean-François for a one week type workshop in Seattle back in 2012. So we had 24 students signed up for a one week workshop. And Jean-François suggested that groups of students work together to make a type face based on found type from a sign. So I wasn't actually too sure about the sign idea when he suggested it. It makes sense where Jean-François lives because he lives in Paris. You know, there are many beautiful hand-lettered signs in Paris and in fact there are so many that people even write books about the signs in Paris. So this is a lovely book by Louise Feeley that documents a lot of those beautiful Parisian signs. But I realized after thinking about it, Seattle does in its own way have some interesting vernacular signs. Like there was the old food giant sign that used to be in Wallingford. That's now the Wallingford sign above the QFC. And there's these interesting faded ghost signs on the waterfront or Pioneer Square and other parts of Seattle. And actually signs turned out to be a good prompt because they're relatively easy to photograph and it's easy to enlarge the photograph so that the letters can be traced by hand. So you see here this is Jean-François showing our students like how you can trace letters, right? And then like a little detail of him as well. So because of the way the alphabet's organized, once you have some of the letters which you have from the signs, you can basically derive the others. So for example, if you've got the E, you can easily make the F, L, H, I and T. If you've got the O, you can make the C and the G roughly. If you've got the O and the E, you can make the B. The P's also related to that and so on and so forth. It works the same way for the lowercase letters as well. Once you've got the lowercase O, which you can kind of get from the uppercase O, you can get the C and the E, for example. Then you've got these basic shapes, which aren't too difficult. And then you can combine those to make the D, B, P, Q, so on and so forth. The other good thing about signs is that there are also historical artifacts that show type in a certain context. So for example, for Jean-François's workshop, a group of students used this bakery sign. And they had to research similar typefaces. And they realized some of these other typefaces might be classified today as geometric or industrial. But you can also see that the original sign, the letters that form the word bakery, are different from those kinds of designs. Like you could say that it's warmer or it's less rigid. Maybe it's less digital. It's kind of more analog. And I think those are interesting things for the students to discover about classification. OK. So because this is a 20-minute talk, I just want to focus on maybe five things I've learned in that Steven Sagmeister kind of way about teaching type design in a group this way as a group project based on a signage prompt. So the quality of the original tracing is critical. Like the students have to make the letters have even color. And they have to agree on all the letter stroke measurements. For example, here's this great sign in Oakland. This is actually Paul Shaw, who is leading a Seattle type walk. He does these great type walks all over the country and even in Europe. So then I actually think it's sold out. It's happening at 11 o'clock today. So I straighten the sign out and Photoshop just so that students can trace it so that there's an even baseline on an X height, for example. So then this is their sketch, their final sketch, kind of showing you can get the O if you look at it. See how there's an O and no. You can get the O here, but they have to figure out how to get the uppercase O, the lower case L, and the uppercase I, because these will be the kind of cornerstone measurements for the rest of their type. I was surprised how long this actually takes. This usually takes one week of the quarter. Because you can see, OK, they draw this one first. And it's like, obviously, this one's too condensed, too narrow for that lower case O. It doesn't usually look right if you make the outside a perfect circle. That's a little awkward looking. It looks more like a symbol than a letter. So then here, better shape overall, but the inner counter is too narrow. So then you can see here, all right, well, maybe this will be something that works. OK. So the other thing that happens is even after everybody agrees on those stroke measurements, the students really need to work together as much as possible. And they have to keep checking against each other. It's very easy for them to deviate. I remember in our workshop with Jean-Francois, he got upset with them. He said, the shapes, it is hard. I understand. But the weights, it is easy. So they were like, OK, it's not actually that easy. So you can see here, I try to give them plenty of class time so that they're working together in the groups. They're drawing together in groups, and they show their letters to each other. But what's really important is actually they pin up at each class session so that every time they're looking across to see if they're maintaining those stroke weights and if they're achieving even color. So if they go off and they work on their own and come back and put it together, inevitably there are problems. This is what it usually looks like at the first pass. See whoever drew this O made it darker. See how it's much darker than the P or the N next to it? The contrast is different. So whoever drew that O probably also drew the C and the G because that's kind of a natural combination. See how those are darker too, right? And so is the Q. And then it's always hard to make the diagonals work because frankly they're very different in nature but those are uneven. Then I made the mistake of assigning all the numbers to one person so that person just went off on their own and made numbers that don't match the capitals or the lowercase. So it's always hard to kind of get that together. And this of course leads to conflicts where you can see people are like, are you gonna redraw your letters or am I gonna redraw my letters? So that's always kind of a problem. It's a little bit better once they get on the computer because then they share files, they share letters and they can make a weight ball like a sort of guide and illustrator that everybody has to match. The other thing I realized that was kind of difficult is students wanna make cool fonts. So they want to have like interesting features. I think one of the most interesting kind of comments made on this has been from Mark Simonson, the type designer. And he talks about how there are fonts that are novice magnets. And I think you know these like gill stands, there's that crazy eyeglasses G or rotus, there's that kind of backward falling C. Those are noticeable features that early designers kind of see and gravitate to. So for example, one year I gave the students this ESSO sign and I said, okay, let's make a type based based on ESSO. And I was pleased, I kind of directed this. I said like, hey, you might want a regular E besides that kind of strange SOE because you won't want to have that strange SOE all the time. So you can see here, they've blown it up and then they've traced it and they tried to derive a standard E. But you can see that on the wall crit, like there's this desire to make kind of strange letters. Like you can see, okay, the N has this curved shape. They rounded the vertex of the V and the A here and then there's this kind of rounded stem of the Z. Those things are fun to do and you feel the desire more as a graphic designer to make something different but it won't necessarily work as a type based. So it's kind of relieved that in the end, the final type based then from here doesn't have those kind of quirky, overly noticeable features. I know that's a matter of taste though. Just to say a little bit more about this then, the personality of a type based is actually changed very dramatically by very minor alterations. Sometimes I think of it as the difference between acting on stage or acting on TV. You know how when you're on stage, you have to make huge movements so everyone can see you in the back. But on TV, even if you make a little turn of your head, that becomes a huge movement. So type design's more like that. So here's a gravestone that I assigned the students this past spring to make a type face from. And you can see here, they made this decision to lower the X height. You can see there's some problems with the basic problems with the form and color. There's some problems with this G for example and then the S, pretty challenging letter here. Also a little tight here. So there's a number of little difficulties. But you can see that just by changing the X site, the character of that type face is different. It's not quite as masculine maybe. It's a little Mrs. Evezy. It's maybe a little sweeter, a little more feminine. So this is actually their final board. So you can see it doesn't actually look that much. Like the original, you see that? It's still interesting. And I think there are parts of it that are good. There's still some places where I think it could be refined. Like still this E problem. But you can see it, just that small change in X height makes a huge difference to the personality. This is a similar example. In Seattle, there's a more theater and hotel, which has these interesting hand-lettered signs and also has these play bills. So you can see here those O's. They're kind of tight here. So they started drawing those just the way they are. And then they decided it may be easier to work with this type face and work it out if we expand that. So you can see they've worked with these different shapes where there's a wider interior space. I think this is the final set of those cornerstone letters. But in the end, I was kind of wondering whether it was overly sanitized. Like this is their final type design poster, which I think is good for sophomores. I think they still learn from the exercise. But I think in a way, the original has this kind of messy grooviness that maybe isn't kind of captured in the translation. Okay. So as educators, you probably already know this one, but I discovered that not all student groups are harmonious. I tried to head this off when I was working with them in the beginning. So when they make groups, I gave them this little quick personality test that an HR company had provided to me, where you're trying to assess kind of the major differences in personality that might lead to differences in how people work in groups, for example. So they have to kind of mark where they are on these continuums and show them to each other and discuss them, right? And then I know this is too small for you to read, but I also did this peer eval. I used to do this at the end and just use it for grading, but actually I did it in the middle this time where they did it at the middle of the project and actually had to show their report card to each other and talk about ways that they could try to improve their group overall. So, because I thought what was happening is they'd do it at the end and then I'd realize that that group was really miserable together, but then the course would be over and it would be too late to do anything. So by doing it in the middle, I tried to address the fact that they would have a chance to change. So, but even despite that, some people just didn't have a good time working in groups because there is a lot to manage and people do have different ideas and styles. And then there's the classic problem of social loafing that some people in a group do slack off. So then I did try to address the issue of workload by figuring out each student would have 14 glyphs. Obviously this does make 70 glyphs, so it's a really small type base, but it is a 10 week quarter. So basically everybody has one really hard letter and then some easy letters and then some moderate letters in between. And I tried to mix it so everyone's doing a mix of uppercase, lowercase or symbols or punctuation. But then of course some people did have a good group experience. Some people said that the fact that they're in groups helped them learn how to be productive in teams and that it was a good use of time because there was no way for them to draw all the letters by themselves. Okay, so I thought you'd be interested to see the actual final projects. So this is from Jean-Francois Workshop. The students selected this signed picture from Flickr of this Italian boutique. So you can see here, you know, this is their research on finding type bases similar to the Italy type base. So this is the final design. Again, these kind of type bases that don't have curves are a little bit easier to accomplish in a short amount of time. Okay, so this is the group that had bakery. This is actually this great foreign exchange student that we had from Australia, from Melbourne. He actually now works at the Heffler type foundry. Like he liked this project so much that he went to the Cooper Union program in the summer and then he got that job. He's a web developer for them. I don't think they let him draw type. But still, you know, it changed his life, you know. So, okay. So this is their font bakery. You can see in a week, there are still problems. There are spacing problems, you know, right here. Okay, and then I'm not totally convinced about this A, you know, that little notch down there. And then this B is too dark. That's, you know, like, okay, we should have worked on that. Okay. And then the group that had ESO. This is their final type base. So you can see it in use, you know, here. This is like a year that actually I had each student make their own poster in different years too. I've also had the students in a group have to agree on one poster. Again, it's a matter of time. Okay. And then this is the group that had that great Oakland typeface, the one that said pedestrian, you know, here. And this is their final typeface here. There's some spacing problems. Woo. Okay, but then, and also like some of the type, you know, like originally here, this S is kind of neat. It sort of doesn't really want to work yet in the typeface, you know, maybe the translation, it may be the actual shape, maybe that actually needs to change. Okay. And then for the fun of it, I actually chose a typeface from that beautiful book of Parisian Signs. It's this typeface here. And this is the group's work on that. Okay. So I thought I'd close with just a few of the student comments. And this is maybe why I think it's still important to teach type design amongst all the things that we have to do in a kind of soup to nuts graphic design program at the University of Washington. What's important is that the students become visually sensitized. You know, learning how to draw a good O is about drawing a good O, but it's also about the study of good form, right? And that's what's important to them. And then, and also I think drawing type is fun. It's fun to draw the letters, right? And so I think it's great that we instill in the students like a real love and a joy for type because, you know, type an image or the meat and potatoes of graphic design. So thank you.