 I teach at RIT, I teach graphic design there, and I'm going to be talking about actually a project that I did in my interactive media design class. Okay, so it's called Adopt-a-Font. So basically I was asked to teach an interactive media design class, and I panicked, only because I am new to coding myself and thinking about how to teach that made me, you know, filled with panic. So of course, I always, before I start teaching a class, I think about questions, or things I want to cover, so here's some of the questions I had before the class started. One was how can I help the students not be petrified by coding, because I too am petrified, so how do I get them to be comfortable? How can I get the students off the computer? Again, you know, it's kind of saying, like what Julie says, they get so entrenched in the computer, and also it being an interactive class, and a coding class, that's, they don't even think about being off the computer, but you can actually create things off the computer and then bring it into a website, or a web design. How can I make a website project defined and yet flexible without it seeming too wacky? I sometimes have a tendency to take sophomore level classes and kind of try and be a little too experimental with them, so that they don't really, you know, I kind of do the rules, but then I really want them to play. And then how can I get the students to pay attention to type on the screen? Sometimes I wonder if they've taken a type class before they get to my class, and I teach a type class, so I'm always like, didn't we go over this? So I want them to focus on type on screen as well as type, as they would when they do type in print. And then how can the students learn more typographical history? So this is always my big thing. I do teach history of graphic design at RIT, and I really want to always try and integrate history into all of my classes. I think it's important. I think it's important for the students to really research things and look beyond contemporary things. And then lastly, how am I going to make it fun for me too, because that's kind of, I think, a big point, and I think it's important to do that. So just to give you a little background, the Cary Collection is housed at RIT, and it's basically a collection of printed materials. It was started by Melbert Cary. He was the director of Continental Type Founders Association. He was interested in printing. He collected a lot of type specimen books, printer's manuals, and then also just really beautiful printed books. And the Cary Collection, it was donated to the Cary Collection at RIT, and it's grown since. So they started a program called Adopt-a-Font, and this was started by Amelia Hugo-Fontanelle, who's the associate curator at the Cary Collection. She's fantastic. She started this program. They had over 100 wood type faces in storage that were in really bad condition and they needed to be cleaned and they needed to be catalogued. And she didn't have the people power to do this, so she decided, oh, I'll do a volunteer project and let people volunteer their time, come in. They can adopt their type face, their font, wood type, clean it up using Gojo, which is a cleaning solution or substance, using towels, q-tips. They couldn't use anything pointy because that would ruin the surface of the wood type. And then when they were done cleaning it, they were able to print because there's printing presses in the Cary Collection as well. So they were able to print a type specimen, and then she could keep one so people could see what this would look like as well. So I always wanted to do this project with my type class, and I could never figure out how to integrate it into all of the other things I needed to go over and type. So when I was asked to teach this interactive class, my colleague Kelly Murdock-Kitt, who's fantastic, she's really the interactive person at RIT or my program, we were talking about ideas for projects, and she said, well, what about a final project being adopt a font? Were they adopt a font? And then they create a website based on their findings and they have to research, et cetera, et cetera. So I was like, yes, that's perfect. I can because it'll make it fun for me. And that's, you know, not to say the most important thing, but I also felt like they were going to be excited to do this as well. So I just kind of wanted to show you some of the outcomes I don't have time really to show you all of the websites that came out of it, but I will show you the two at the end so you can kind of get an idea of how it looked when it was live. But the outcomes were basically the students were paired into groups and I taught two sections of this class last spring. And so some of the groups were three to four, and some were four to five people in a group. So they were charged with going over to the Kerry Collection, picking out their font family as a group, find one that they liked, clean it, do all that thing, do all that stuff, print the type specimen, and then start document everything. I wanted them to document, take thousands and thousands of pictures, document every single step of the way. And then they started researching the typeface and then just kind of start the creative process. So this is just showing you some of like, not all of the process, but just some of the things like mood boards and sketches, images from when they were cleaning the typeface. They also had to include a video or some sort of motion component. It could be done anyway. They could do gifs, they could do after effects, they could do video animation. It was really up to them, but I wanted some sort of motion component and they could do it based on their process or based on the typeface. Again, I just wanted to keep that a bit flexible and open. So what was kind of cool was that some of the students had picked fonts, font families out, that they couldn't find a name for it. So if they didn't have it through the research, if they didn't have a name that they could find, they came up with their own. So this group came up with Hatch because they researched Hatch show print and they realized that this typeface was very similar to type that was used on those posters and they wanted to give it a name so they called it Hatch. And it's kind of funny because they came to me like, this is so cool, Hatch show print. And I was like, yes, I know, I told you about that in Graphic Design History last semester, but they, you know, so it's kind of, and that's fine. Like I forget that they're students and you tell them one thing and it takes like five more times to tell them the same thing and then they get it. But it was cool. I was really glad they got excited about it. And so essentially their overall look was really like posters. So each page was like, you know, look like a Hatch show poster. Some students, oh, and also the thing about the Hatch show was with the coding. So I really wanted the students to focus on the design and learning how to design for the web and keeping the coding as simple as possible. I told them when we first started, I taught them HTML and CSS, very basic. I was lucky enough to have a GA. So he was a grad student who was big into coding. And I said, if you want to do anything above and beyond this, I'm happy to help you or give you resources, but I don't, some of the stuff I don't know as well. So some of them loved the fact that they could just be very simple with their coding. And I only really wanted them to be able to code so I could click, you know, the links worked and you could navigate through the website. So I wanted them to really focus on the research and the design and not get too wrapped up in the coding because we only had four weeks. So one week was really dedicated to them going to adopt the font and then cleaning it and researching and then three weeks to make and collect all the stuff. So it was a short period of time. So some of them found ways or were interested in how old type bases were used in contemporary ways. So a lot of like showing logos of how, you know, Cheltenham was used in LLB and that sort of thing. And some of them weren't as strong as others. Due to the group dynamic sometimes, there were some people that dropped the ball. There were, with this group, I really think they kind of tried to go a little bit above and beyond what they were capable of doing. Their video component didn't actually show up on time because the person who was in charge of it, they lost consciousness, MIA. So there was all these weird dynamics. And I didn't want to, with grading, have that go against any of the students either. So when the students were done with the projects, they were given an evaluation form to evaluate each person in the group and they sent it back. And honestly, I knew what was going on. I pretty much had a good idea of the different group dynamics and what was happening. I felt like anything was really a surprise because I did grade them kind of individually. I talked to the groups when they would present and asked each member of the group, what did you do? What did you work on? Sort of thing. And so that's kind of how I did the grading. I don't know that that's a great idea, but for this project at that time, I was like, okay, I think this will work. This is another group that, again, they kind of took on a lot and they had to name, they renamed the typeface, incandesced, which was very cute and clever, whatever. But the project itself or the website itself didn't really evolve the way it could have. So this one fell a little short. But again, I think in the end, the point of seeing these was more, I was more excited about the fact that they got so much done in so little time and that they learned kind of how to work through all of this stuff that happens along the way. So that was, you know, they learned how to problem solve in that sense. This group did really well together. The reason why I like this one was the website was very simple. They at first had the idea of doing a circus fun, you know, like house of fun kind of theme, but they decided, you know, the history of this typeface is really interesting. So they wanted to focus on that. So the page down here, you can tell it's very simple. So they just put a picture, and then the text of the history. And the other cool thing was that the students had to write all of their text. If they got text from somewhere, they had to source it obviously at the last page. But the text was really kind of cool and it was kind of fun and they were goofy about it, which was I liked seeing that too. So these last two are really the ones that I love the most. I mean, I love them all again for the same reasons that like I saw things in them that I was like, wow, that's really cool that they did that or they thought about that. But these last ones, I think, really kind of went above and beyond what they could have done. So this group was interested, again, Hatch Show print came up with them, the circus theme. What they did was they made animated gifs. So this, and I'll show you this after the next one, but this whole front screen are animations, little animations that, using French clarity and condense. So very clever, kind of fun. And then this one was antique Tuscan condense, but they called it Le Cirque and they totally took the circus theme. So they basically made it feel like it was a three-ring circus. So when we look at it, so JP if I can. Okay, so I'll show you this one first. So this is the Le Cirque and what they wanted to do is they wanted to do parallax and I was like, whoa, that's cool. But I had no idea how to do that. So you guys have to figure that out. So it was really awesome. They kind of, you know, they did this whole parallax thing. They made a little video, creepy clowns and things. And the group was great because there was one guy that was so geeking out on coding. So he did the parallax. He's like, no, I want to do it. And then one person was really interested in drawing and illustration. So she did a little bit of, you know, clipped over clip art and also some of her own illustrations. But the idea was that you would keep kind of moving through it. And then the information, you would get to different, different paper information. I will say that this is a little glitchy for sure. But again, I wasn't grading them on how they're coding. Like, I didn't look at the coding. I wasn't grading. I was grading on how interactive it was, like how engaging it was, that sort of thing. So I'll just take you through this. So they just, you know, showed the history. And this is actually supposed to move as well. So it's supposed to kind of go through the alphabet of Tuscan. It doesn't work, but it worked and when they presented it. But when I got it, I was like, what's going on? And the music is so funny. So that gives you an idea. And then this is the, um, the French Clarinet, actually. I'm just, can I just open up that splash page? No, that's okay. Oh no, no, never mind. I think this will do it. Yeah, I think this will do it. I think that's where it, there. So this is the, um, the site that used all of the gifts. Um, so when I saw this, I was immediately like so excited and, you know, jumping up and down in my seat because I was like, yes, that's exact. You know, they just had fun with it. And again, each person in this group kind of took on things. There were some issues, um, you know, personality dynamics, of course, but they really, again, they worked through it and they really tried to kind of play around with this, um, and explore the typeface and explore motion and explore how to show, you know, this, and you'll notice like some of it, it's a little clunky. You know, we've got these like really big, long, um, pages. But again, um, I felt, I felt really pleased with some of the outcomes. So, okay. So the answers to the questions from the beginning sort of, um, again, so students being petrified, they're always going to be petrified no matter, you know, what, because it's a new language for them. So coding is completely like, whee, you know, but, um, I realized that they have to be patient and I have to be patient with them. Um, students getting students off the computer, just I, making the students leave the classroom when I told them, I would say, okay, group one, you're being forced out, you're going to the carry collection, you're going to go clean. You know, just really pushing them outside helped a lot. I also, because it was spring and I live, we live in Rochester, New York. When spring came, I said, go outside, go to the table. So, and I would go out and do work and they would sit in groups and they really were, were good about it. They didn't take off and, you know, go home. Um, how to make website product defined and flexible. So providing the tools was helpful. Experiential components was helpful. Um, how to make them pay attention. Obviously creating a project that was type based helped them to really think about type and it just forced that onto them. And then how to integrate typographical history. When you provide them with artifacts, it forces them obviously to research history and create contemporary projects. And I know not everybody has a carry collection or an adoptive front program. But I think there's every institution has some sort of archive or library. So I think you can still go in and pull things out to have the students work on or pick a couple of things to have the students work on and you can create things from that. So I think you can look, you don't have to always have, you know, these great archives or anything like that. I think you can really figure out how to do it. And then finally, even when it's challenging, it's still kind of fun. So again, there were moments when I was like, Oh my God, what did I do? Or, you know, they hate me. I'm sure they hated me at times. But again, that was kind of the point of the whole thing too. So thank you. And if you want to email me with any suggestions on that project or other interactive type based projects, I'd be very happy to hear your feedback.