Do you need to go to the fine art school to be a painter? you can, and you can not. I don’t believe you can go to a school and end up as an artist. However, typography, for some, is a conservative artform supposed to have rules and conditions. So, why are they not formalised that much. Why are there few schools to teach you this discipline? I don’t know. it’s a craft, it’s a skill, you can teach yourself, you can learn it from others. Why bothering. Learning is a big time process.
Is there a uni for poetry?
are there poets with Nobel prices coming from big poetry courses?
However, I have no answer but a similar questions.

A year-long masters program sounds like overkill to me - I would think one class would be enough to learn what you need to know about type history/design.

For myself I have no formal training in typography, but was lucky enough (I think) to learn design just before the advent of the computer. You really had to know your type in those days, because mistakes were very expensive to correct. Also the number of fonts to choose from was far far fewer. I was also lucky to have a boss when I started out who took a real interest in making sure I understood type. But, I’m a graphic designer, not a type designer.

I have always thought that a graphic design degree is basically a waste of money.

Actually, I’ve always considered getting a degree in graphic design the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done. It certainly wasn’t a waste of money.

Also, unless one devotes years to teaching type design to oneself—and even here, one needs input, feedback, and interaction with one’s peers and mentors (conferences and the internet are the best ways now to accomplish this)—several academic courses are necessary. A single, one semester class isn’t going to cut it, and I doubt that it ever has.

A one-year master’s degree isn’t the only way, but it is one of the fastest. The most positive things that one might learn at Reading or the Hague are quick production methods. And how to use Python. People hiring young type designers are often looking for this skill more than any other. You can teach this to yourself as well, but it’ll take more time that way.

A degree—like it or not—also acts as a badge of authority (depending on where one got it, of course).

I did not have any formal training in type design, but I have a huge amount of respect for what Gerry does at Reading (the only programme with which I am personally familiar) and rather wish that I had spent such a year at the beginning of my career. I think the principle value of such a course is that it packages the information that one needs and compresses the experience of designing a typeface family in a structured timeframe, while at the same time allowing for much more freedom of exploration than working to a commercial deadline. I’m very much aware, as someone who is largely self-taught and who learned on the job, that it has taken a long time to fill various holes in my knowledge, and some still exist: learning on the job, you learn only what you need to get the particular job done. In a programme with a structured curriculum, you are more likely to learn more things in a short period of time.

My only formal training related to type design: evening classes in calligraphy.
If it’s training you want, rather than education, the workshops at TypeCon, ATypI, Typotechnica, etc., are useful.

I also studied graphic design before the days of the personal computer, and I am very glad to have gone to school. You meet other people that share your interests and are exposed to different points of view, something you might not get if you are studying on your own. Also, I feel that school gives you the chance to try things out before going out into the real world, working on projects you might not have a go at otherwise.

I’ve met a lot of graphic designers and there are great divisions of opinion on how worthwhile people found the actual degree. I am living proof that it’s not impossible to miss out on a piece of paper and to learn your craft so my opinion is biased. Three of four years without commercial pressure to experiment within though, aren’t something to be sniffed at.

The difference between type design and graphics are that there are significant fewer places in which this craft can be learnt on the job, and therefore you have to teach yourself. Perhaps at the end of the day, drive is the only thing that matters. If you want something badly enough, one way or another you will achieve the things you want to.

I agree with you on that last point, Dux. Drive certainly matters. On the other hand, I too have been thinking about taking some calligraphy or type design classes. At the last TypeCon I took a one-day workshop with Dennis Pasternak and got a lot out of it. I feel that when it comes to type design, there is only so much you can get from books.

I am also curious about the program at Reading, but for me that would mean dropping everything and moving to England for a year. Maybe someday I’ll be prepared to do that.

I too am self-taught re type design, and, like others, understand that there are many things still to learn. What can be taught is how to use the tools, whether it is the software program, especially stuff like Quark, InDesign, FontLab, Fontographer, etc., or the pencil. But drive is what you need, without question.
Jordan

I guess my skepticism of design school is that since design is essentially an applied art, those 2-3 years of “freedom of exploration” tend to produce both a portfolio full of absurdly impractical designs and a bunch of graduates who don’t want to be told no you can’t use 6 colors plus die cuts plus 3 different kinds of paper. Plus they expect to be handed the keys to the castle rather than starting at the bottom designing flaps for a book jacket like the rest of us.

It is not the same as going to school for, say, painting where I think students should be encouraged to push their minds as far as they can without commercial constraints (altho that said, MFA programs have become trade schools for the chelsea gallery system nowadays anyway).

I confess I don’t know much about the type programs (Reading, the Hague) they may be much more valuable than Pratt or Parsons.

Learning the tools are one thing, learning what to do with them is another.

I’ve got nothing against experimentation, but in terms of graphic design especially, there is an inescapable constraint of commercial viability that needs to be operated within. I tend to see folios that fluctuate between the unfeasible and the flat and cliched. Balance and perspective are the ideal I supose.

Also, I think the ego you mention is probably more to do with youth than anything else.

> a portfolio full of absurdly impractical designs and a bunch of graduates who don’t want to be told no you can’t use 6 colors plus die cuts plus 3 different kinds of paper. Plus they expect to be handed the keys to the castle rather than starting at the bottom designing flaps for a book jacket like the rest of us

Heh heh, I’ve known people like this and maybe I’ve been guilty of some of these things myself at one time, but let’s give design school a chance — you can also learn what it means to think conceptually, or the history of art and design, too.

Sorry for the slightly off-topic comment, but I just had to say that.

:-)

No need to apologise, it’s not off-topic in the least.

Jonathan Hoefler was self-taught and he’s pretty good at what he does. I think it all boils down to determination. I remember reading an interview on Mr. Hoefler (EYE magazine I think)and he said that he was probably the only fifteen year-old with a subcription to U&Lc magazine. I’d like to think a large part of the success he has today is due to his determination in wanting to be a type designer.

How long has it taken the self-taught to produce the first face that they look back on as fully successful?

Fully successful? That’s a tall order, as there are always things I am dissatisfied with, whether I notice them at the time or years later. I started designing type in early 1994. I think I began to get quite good at it in a general sense about 2001. The designs I produced from about 1998-onward have many good attributes, but may contain things that I now would do differently and, I think, better.

20 years.
But then, I was subscribing to NME when I was 15, and have yet to have a hit record.

Less than a decade isn’t bad, John: it would seem that type design is more like lyric poetry than fiction (no one ever produced their best work in fiction before the age of thirty-eight). And Aeneas (1997?) is beautiful too!

Just seen your message, Nick; with this enlarged sample, type design’s looking tougher, though less tough than determining which three chords to play and how to wear your hair.

Dylan Thomas wrote lucidly and successful at twenty one I believe - but I’m sure there are many exceptions to the rule. I’m going off at a tangent...

It doesnt surprise me that figures of 7 years and upwards are being mentioned. Learning your history and appreciating your place in it are perpetual tasks, but I guess it takes a while to take in enough to make a genuine contribution.

One benefit to the graduate Reading program (and others) that hasn’t been mentioned is that it’s a necessary qualification if you at some point want to become a full-time teacher. (At least here in Canada.)

Though they used to be more liberal, most college and university design programs will only consider hiring instructors who have done an MA with some design program, type or otherwise.

Teaching may not be an immediate consideration for you and a potential type design career, but it’s always good to consider down the line. I know I have! And goodness knows it would benefit the type community at large to have more type-savvy instructors in our schools.

Helpful classes are also available at places other than college. I benefitted tremendously by a typography class taught at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts:

http://www.mnbookarts.org/

The self-taught vs. formal education debate seems to be a personal matter. People learn in different ways and value different educational settings. One is not necessarily better than the next.

However, a formal education isn’t wholly comprised of learning software, creating a portfolio and getting a degree. A good program can provide you new ways of thinking, a new context to create work, new experiences you might not have gained on your own and forces you to examine your successes and more importantly, failures.

My time getting my masters was invaluable. I’ve also learned much on my own. It’s what experiences you consider valuable.

Last but not least, if it is financially viable, the one year you spend at Reading (or another program) may save you five learning on your own.

fully successful

how would you quantify this? what is your definition of success?

By fully successful I mean satisfying the designer both in the large and in detail as a piece of design, after several years have passed and different work has been done.

I have been a self-taught lettering and calligraphy student since I was about 3, and I didn’t have any classes or training related to lettering or type until I got my degree, late in life at 28, in Printing, with a concentration in typography. There were no classes in type design at RIT (Rochester NY) during those years, but there were many type-related events like the Goudy Awards, and classes in type design taught by Julian Waters (the same class that had been taught by H. Zapf earlier).

Book arts, typography, fine printing and printing history were all elements of the curriculum, but I had to engineer the type design experiences on my own. Internships and self-motivation were the places I learned some of the craft of type design, and now, after 4.5 years as a type designer, I find each new project challenges me and I learn new things. So really my education/experience isn’t finished. But I have been consistently active in letter arts since my childhood.

I do duspect that if there was a program focused on type design I would have progressed faster, and made fewer mistakes, but then too, I’ve been fortunate to have guidance all along the way, simply by asking, sharing and talking. I guess I would say that if someone wants to boost their development they should certainly consider Reading, but in the end I agree that one’s success will depend heavily on determination and sustained interest.

I think I released my first successful typeface at age 29. However, It was preceded by several very labored and unworthy efforts which I am quite glad have never been seen. I am an advocate of discarding one’s first typeface design. Also, that first “successful” design had a very modest brief and was not an ambitious project, and succeeds in its narrow intended application only.

However, Jonathan was certainly not the only 15-year-old with a subscription to U&lc.

And Aeneas (1997?) is beautiful too!

And derivative, which explains more of the beauty than my skills of the time. This is another point about learning type design: one’s earliest efforts will almost always be derivative, because it is only with experience in making letterforms that you begin to think about them in original ways. So one benefit of school is that it gives you time to get past this before you start flogging your wares.

OK. That’s why I want to start with a revival (on an MA course) rather than be derivative despite myself, and/or simply incompetent; which combination some might remember from my Mamillius lowercase (q., if you really want to, v.). And the nice thing about revivals is that one can flog them despite their being derivative.

it is only with experience in making letterforms that you begin to think about them in original ways.

I would say the opposite is true.
Formal education or training, and the marketplace, are all normative.

About originality and education.

This is a general problem for all fields. Nick is right that schools all have their norms.

What I think generates originality is that each person brings his or her own goals and problems—I mean design or intellectual problems—that motivated the education in the first place. The problem is when the education is overbearing or the student weak, and that spark of interest is squashed.

But if the school is good at nurturing the individual spark, or the individual is strong, it will not squelch the originality. In this case all learning, whether it is of craft, relevant information, or norms is to the good.

The important thing if you are a teacher is to nurture the spark while teaching ideas and skills and knowledge. The important thing if you are a student is to keep your individual interests alive and active while you are a student, and spending more time acquiring information and skills, rather than producing.

>it is only with experience in making letterforms that you begin to think about them in original ways.

True for me - and also the reason for discontinuing some of my early efforts.

While I do have a formal education in graphic design from the prehistoric era which included classes in typography, calligraphy, logo & symbol design, and letterform design (all by-hand, brush, paint, pen, etc., I have no formal education in type design and am new to the attempt.
I thought my formal design training was quite valuable. We saw NONE of the bull-headed insistence on “’freedom of exploration’ ...absurdly impractical designs...6 colors plus die cuts plus 3 different kinds of paper.” that Patty refers to. I would be interested to know if all the people Patty has encountered with those problems were from the same school.
If I were 40 years younger and not supporting my family, I would love to attend a one year stint at Reading or The Hague. Type design is a solitary venture and having a brief (one year is quite short) saturated experience with a group of type minded colleagues and first rate teachers sounds like heaven to me. You will have a lifetime to be self-taught, why not take one year to attend a good school. I cannot imagine it doing you harm to be in a community of scholars for that small decimal of time.

“How long has it taken the self-taught to produce the first face that they look back on as fully successful?”
I can’t imagine ever feeling anything I have done of any sort to be so fully successful that I could not go back and tinker with it yet again. I will just say that I have produced 4 original type families in the past 2 years. I am far too perfectionistic to pronounce any of them “fully Successful” now and perhaps never will. I don’t think going to a type design school would have any affect on that feeling either. It is just my nature.

My advice as self-taught old geezer:
1. Go take the 1 year program and immerse yourself in it fully.
2. Don’t expect to come out of either the school or any other kind of single experience (including self-taught) as being “prepared to be fully successful” by virtue of it. Just go do it and work your butt off in the pursuit of experience.
3. School is not a requirement and should not be looked at as such. It should be looked upon as a unique experience.

ChrisL

I should add one more point related to my lat one:
4. Getting an education is NOT the same as getting an injection. You should not go to a school or apprentice situation and assume you will be infused with knowledge and skill. You can go to the Doctor and get an injection of antibiotic to cure an infection with little participation other than offering our arm. Schools should not be seen as a large hypodermic device injecting students with a profession. The lion’s share of responsibility lies with the student both during the school experience and after graduation. School plants a seed which the student must nurture fully before he/she can harvest the fruits of their labors.

In other words, You Get What You Work For.

ChrisL

Let me clarify my statement about experience and originality. In my experience, it is only after making letterforms for some time that one begins to think about them in original ways that work. The Typophile crit forum is full of original ideas about letterforms by beginners, but few of these ideas work very well and the designs do not hold together as typefaces.

Yes - how degradingly difficult it is without experience! One wades from fall to fall, and each luminous perception proves just more mud.

“Yes - how degradingly difficult it is without experience! One wades from fall to fall, and each luminous perception proves just more mud.”

But that is precisely what experience is! You learn from those muddy experiences.

ChrisL

I used to try to hide the fact that I have never had any art school training, other than two seasons of night school, but quite a few years ago I tired of the effort it took to remember which art school I had lied about attending the last time I was asked about it.
This became a real strain when I was teaching graphic design! what crust, huh?

I escaped from the composing room close to 40 years ago and have managed to make a living, feed three kids and legions of cats; and we own 93% of our old house. No training involved.

Quite a few people on this forum hvae noted that they came to graphic design by dent of effort and have managed to work successfully in the field of graphic design, and why not.

It seems that hardly anyone in history had had much if any training in type design. I mentioned in another post that some come from sign writing backgrounds. Oz Cooper and Robert Foster are prime examples of men who worked a long time doing sho-card painting for department stores.

I think that anything that forces one to look closely at letters and render them in any medum over a long time is one of the best training grounds.

Don’t get me wrong; I think there is great value in a formal graphic design education and I really do wish that I had had the opportunity, but I found myself shoved into a compositor apprenticeship and there was no arguing about it. Now more than a half century later I wish that I had taken the time to thank my old dad for making the decision for me. I got to draw in the and and along the way picked up some type education.

Jim

The education of the designer.
The education of the graphic designer.
The education of the typographer.
The education of the type designer.
The education of the calligrapher.
The education of the lettering artist.
The education of the sign painter/sign maker.

You might think there was a core commonality in their curriculum, but if that were true how is it that they differ so greatly in their viewpoints. Is it methodology or end product that narrows their focus?
Is it the hierarchy or “pecking order” of the decision makers?

The type designer and calligrapher can (but not always) work like poets, in isolation with deep focus and singular intent.

The graphic designer, typographer (if one still exists) generally now works in a semi-office/studio agency environment and is shuttled between the client and printer. Some may still work in printshops, newspaper/periodicals, in marketing communications depts., etc. Business, business, business... and, oh yeh... marketing BS.

The “designer/director/creative” slightly higher in the pecking order will spend more time on proposal writing, meetings and presentations than deeply intrenched in guiding the production.

The lettering artist used to work in semi-studios or busy production areas, but nowadays since it’s a much rarer skill, can work as an individual at home or in small office... alone.

The sign painter/maker generally works in a workshop-like area, garage, small industrial space and gets to drink beer with the truckers.

Something happens to you after formal education. You work!
The skills required (manual, not thinking ones) are generally taught on the job, on the fly, or as you can.

When I was teaching second year graphic designers about typography, the only ones (two actually) that progressed the fastest in terms of type sensitivity, were the ones who were already trying some kind of design work as a source of income. Those students during the course of 15 weeks never lost a chance to stay and ask for an opinion or critique of the pieces they designed at work (one of them designed flyers at a small print shop). They asked questions less during class, but more one-on-one after class.

Of the regular day students, many did well, some did not, but only the working students were passionate about learning more!

When I was in my senior year at college I was a “brilliant artiste” and it wasn’t until I worked nine-to-five that I realized how much I had to learn.

There is another aspect to design education that I hope to share (I’m writing notes on type ed) and that has more to do with the height, depth and breadth of learning and understanding one NEEDS to incorporate into their life’s education. Because graphic design is now being taught with fewer academic subjects in the humanities and sciences, graduates are gradually falling lower in the corporate food chain. The devaluation of design and designers by corporations (as well as other creative contributors) is making this world an uglier place.

The type designer ... can (but not always) work like poets, in isolation with deep focus and singular intent.

I wish. If you run your own foundry, those moments are precious and hard to come by, except perhaps late at night when you’re all alone (but that was another thread...)

Thanks all for your comments. We have all taken different paths, and have had different experiences along them, so it’s interesting to hear your views on this subject. I personally deliberately shunned university first time round — I wasnt a hundred percent sure what I wanted to study, and didnt want to fall off the conveyor belt like my friends. You go to school, you do your a-levels, you finish university and you start work — and you barely have a moment to think. Going straight into the world of work I’ve had time to decide exactly what I want to do, I’ve gained some perspective, and now if I were to study, I would enter it fully committed. I hate to say it but too many students enter a course without this, and it’s no surprise they end up as they do.

My feelings are much like Carl Crossgrove’s and John Hudson’s on this. My education was like Carl’s, at RIT. If the Reading MA in Type Design had existed, and I had known of it back then, I would have gone there instead, and gotten a lot more out of it in terms of my type design abilities. That being said, a lot of the stuff I learned at RIT that I would not have gotten at Reading has been very helpful - I got a much broader education in printing and workflows.

My experience has been the opposite of Nick’s in one respect - I started out doing extremely derivative stuff, and am now doing things which are at once more original and better executed.

A lot depends on how one learns best, and how one feels about formal education, too. I think the Reading environment would have been good for me, but that doesn’t mean it would be good for everybody.

Cheers,

T

Formal education or training, and the marketplace, are all normative.

Let me clarify that.
In my experience teaching type design (ironic position, for one self-taught), I found the challenge was to reign in the more “creative” students and get them to focus on practicality, and at the same time to fire up the more practical students to think a little more outside the box, pardon the cliche.
So both those actions, on my part, were normative, in the sense that I was encouraging the students to be well-rounded designers.

> ...encouraging the students to be well-rounded designers.

Which I agree is critical to the design student, but well-rounded as individuals as well, meaning a broad range of interests not limited to the arts. So many levels of understanding is essesntial if not critical to approaching design solutions. Design is not just a visual excercise, as evidenced by the depth of dialogue contained throughout Typophile (at least while Chris L and I are not punning you to death).

I’ve made little of my education in this particular thread, but it was extremely intensive from primary school up, and as much training went into the mind as into the hand. By the time I reached college, I was saturated with academic studies, and it was time for my professors to break the shell and let things flow.

After college, it was into the workforce, where problems could be reassimilitate and solutions refreshed... with the help and further lessons by seasoned professionals. It ain’t fun if you’re not being challenged, and if you’re not being challenged, you ain’t learning.

“Because graphic design is now being taught with fewer academic subjects in the humanities and sciences, graduates are gradually falling lower in the corporate food chain.”

I don’t know if “taught with fewer academic subjects” is true in every design school (certainly not at my old alma mater CMU) but I would certainly agree that “graduates are gradually falling lower in the corporate food chain”. This may be more due to the feeling that design is about learning software these days rather than learning communication and design problem solving (so brains are not needed). Just look at the crap that passes as logo design these days!
I also blame the Marketing “BSers” for emphasizing the focus testing but using poor excuses for design to test. I guess the thinking is you can sell anything to a client if you have “data” even if it is lame data so why pay higher design fees when you can hire a kid who just learned Illustrator in a box! The sad part is that real honest testing and marketing could help improve quality but it would of course cost the marketing firm more to do it.

ChrisL

If I get it right, Frank Blokland was saying on Typeradio that Chess seems like an objective game, —Chess n. A board game for two players, each beginning with 16 pieces of six kinds that are moved according to individual rules, with the objective of checkmating the opposing king.— However, no one not even a computer can guess more then 25 moves ahead (or was it less?), beyond that point it’s pure subjectivity. Although it is crucial to know the rules of chess to play it, these won’t turn you into a good player. Even if it’s hard to hear the rules alone don’t tell you how to win, it is in addition to your talent and hard work that you will checkmate everytime.

I have the firm intention to apply to TypeMedia this year and if I get in I will use this as my moto:

Getting an education is NOT the same as getting an injection. You should not go to a school or apprentice situation and assume you will be infused with knowledge and skill. You can go to the Doctor and get an injection of antibiotic to cure an infection with little participation other than offering our arm. Schools should not be seen as a large hypodermic device injecting students with a profession. The lion’s share of responsibility lies with the student both during the school experience and after graduation. School plants a seed which the student must nurture fully before he/she can harvest the fruits of their labors.

—ChrisL

Thanks Chris for these wise words, they give me goose bumps.

Thank you Sebastien! And best of luck in your endeavor.

ChrisL

> I have no other formal training in the arts whatsoever.

Consider yourself lucky.

> I would think one class would be enough

No way.

> it all boils down to determination.

Not all. There’s also the matter of talent.

> People learn in different ways

Very true.

> it is only with experience in making letterforms
> that you begin to think about them in original ways.

No way.

> The type designer and calligrapher can (but not always) work like poets

God forbid.

—

Always remember that formal education is a two-sided coin.
The best way to get into it is with a large backpack of doubt.

hhp

Though my own formal education up through graduating high school was heavily academic (literature, mathematics, physics, the sciences) the high school I went to specialized in pre-college majors in the technical professions: electrical and mechanical engineering, aeronautical engineering, etc.

For my junior and senior years, I was in the Industrial Design program where we learned about development of products from conception through distribution, including drafting, product modeling, prototyping, manufacturing processes, packaging, and finally illustration and advertising.

Not all work was done with books or on the boards as our high school was fully equipted with trade shops which gave us hands-on experience with metal shop (we learned to make our own tools), patternmaking/foundry (reading blueprints we created wood prototypes then cast them in metal), and letterpress printshop.

For me (how one learns is based on the individual) the combination of academic, conceptual development and production training was formative to how I think and what I do.
Sadly, I don’t think many high schools can offer such programs anymore.

Though college continued with some academics and production training, the majority was devoted to preparing the mind and eye for higher level conceptualizing, problem solving and creative thinking (not just art, but for all creative approaches).

A core group of my college instructors never showed us their own work or how they approached problems. They just kept pushing us to push the envelop, to stop being rote thinkers and step through doors that previously seemed locked.

So I guess the core questions is this:
- Do I want to learn a craft then do that for the rest of my life, or do I want to learn something that affects the way I do things for the rest of my life?