Chelsea Contemporary Typography

Week One

Skeletons

Established some general type history, terminology and classification. Turns out everyone was pretty much up to speed already coming but certainly doesn't hurt to be reminded.
Talked about type coming from handwriting
Did some drawings to see how different typefaces are very much defined by their underlying skeletons and how negative space is used in various letterforms.
Set up a shared tumblr to collect research for the duration of the course
Talked about different ways of describing characteristics of a typeface. Turns out you can describe these things on scales
Took Open Sans and modified it to move it to the opposite end of a given scale. I moved it away from "grown-up" towards the "childish" end of the scale by cutting up the letterforms and reassembling them into abstract structures - like I used to take lego kits apart and reassemble them into something they were never intended to be (mostly guns)

They're Camberwell folk who graduated 3 years ago and now run a studio
Talked about a typefe evolving and changing during the course of its lifetime (they had this idea of having a typeface that changes everytime someone looks at the website)
They did this event called particitype in their third year at camberwell where they streamed themselves and volunteers creating a full typeface over the course of a day. Viewiers on the stream gave them instructions as to what tools, colours and techniques to use for each letter. I think if they were to do this again on twich it would probably take off (seeing as "twitch plays pokemon", "twitch plays darksouls two" were wildly popular "twitch does type design" could be equally successful)
Talked about how sometimes design can mean bringing other people into the process, abandoning control can be a good thing.

Created a total of three seperate character sets, each time creating narrowing down the set of instructions.
First typeface: Pull a card with a set of random instructions out of a hat, use whatever tools you like or the instuctions dictate
Second: Still follow random instructions, but use coloured tape for straight lines and either a blue paint roller or a red paintbrush for curves. Also each letter has to have serifs. Also all uppercase.
Third typeface: At this point we sort of quietly abandoned the random instructions. Use a wiggly blue roller line for straights, bits of tape for curves and you must incorporate at least one stencilled red serif into each letter. This time all lowercase.