class

A collection of 27 posts

calligraphy

Built-up Capitals with Yves Leterme

In the spring and early summer, I had signed up for a Built-up Capitals class. Based on my previous experience with Yves' online classes, I figured I would not be able to learn all of the material presented, but at least I would learn something new, and improve my

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Card with raised design

The final assignment for my class was to make a custom card for another person in the group. Card recipients were assigned randomly, and we could ask them a few questions about their preferences. The person receiving my card said her favorite colors were burgundy and olive, and offered several

calligraphy

Blackletter cities

This week, I was studying fraktur capitals, and my homework assignment was to write out a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I chose to write a list of US cities. There are many different styles of writing that can be classified as "blackletter". For this

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Roman capitals with John Stevens

In October, I went to Cheerio for the first time to take a workshop with John Stevens on Roman capitals. First of all, I would like to point out that Camp Cheerio is in a beautiful place, and the view took my breath away. It was such a joy to

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Uncials with Ewan Clayton

The biggest lesson I took away from this class is that there is no single Uncial alphabet, but instead there are different historic variations. We explored different manuscripts and came up with a self-consistent hand, where pen angle, stroke weight and letterform for each letter match the overall style. Of

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Gilding with Peter Thornton

Gilding is another one of those things that I knew nothing about. It's one thing to admire someone else's beautiful work, and another to have a deep understanding of the techniques they used to create the piece. I will have to say right away that gilding

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Brush class with Carl Rohrs

There is one tool that I have always found to be particularly challenging: the brush. I became especially aware of this after taking a sing-painting workshop, and seeing how all of my letters were complete garbage. When Seattletters conference came around, I decided to challenge myself, and finally learn some

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Trajans with Yves Leterme

I signed up for an online Trajans class with Yves, and it was great. I learned a lot, even though I did get to the most interesting (and most challenging) part of the class — brush letters. I would definitely take the class again if I had an opportunity, just so

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Creativity takes courage

I will freely admit to this one being one of my most "cheaty" projects. The task was to write out a quote: Creativity takes courage. — Henri Matisse I wanted to write huge pointed pen letters, but that was hard for 2 reasons: 1. I didn't have

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Fear mediocrity

I don't quite remember where I saw this person, but I saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said: Don't fear failure, fear mediocrity. I really liked this quote. Apparently, it's attributed to a bodybuilder, and I wasn't able to find any other

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Flattery and criticism

This quote is one of my favorites: I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. — Georgia O'Keefe When I was working on the thumbnails, naturally, I had to explore the drain concept. Needless to say,

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Luck favors the alert mind

This was another fun quote assignment for my class with Carol. We started working on it during a class session, and by the end of it I had come up with an obligatory folded pen version: Even though it was generally liked by my classmates, it just didn't

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Smile, breathe, and go slowly

I was taking a year-long class with Carol DuBosch, and one of the assignments was to write out this quote: Smile, breathe, and go slowly. — Thich Nhat Hanh I started out with a few quick sketches. These are not exactly thumbnails, but I needed to present them in class, so

lettering

TypeCon and Blog Update

Last week I went to TypeCon (which is a typographic conference). It was conveniently held in Seattle, so I didn't have to travel far or pay an exorbitant amount for a hotel room. I first heard about this conference last year, when I signed up to take a

calligraphy

Calligraphy Conference

This week I was at the International Calligraphy Conference in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is the first calligraphy conference that I've gone to, and it has definitely exceeded my expectations. It was held at the Warren Wilson College, and I got to (once again) sleep in a dorm.

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Assignment #4: Book (Part 5)

Well, this is the longest series of posts I've written so far! In fact, if I made one post for each iteration of the book, I'd have to make one more. I feel like I've spent enough time talking about it, though, so I

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Assignment #4: Book (Part 4)

For this week, I just had to refine what I had. Originally, this was supposed to be the last class before the book was due, fully printed and bound. However, the instructor was nice and allowed us to have that extra week for the final critique, and then the book

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Assignment #4: Book (Part 3)

The night before the third class, I finally nailed my creative driver. I was crying in the shower when it suddenly came to me: "Freedom to experiment". It was something that the Wikipedia article had mentioned. The Beatles pretended to be a different band so that they could

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Assignment #4: Book (Part 2)

For the second week of the project, I had to create a pagination plan for the entire book, and also to come up with 10 images that would support the story. On top of that, I had to refine my spreads and to clarify my creative driver. Pagination was by

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Assignment #4: Book (Part 1)

The final assignment for my class was to create a book using the provided text. The purpose of this book is to be a high-quality "museum" piece, which serves as tribute to the musician or band that is the subject of the text. This assignment spanned five weeks,

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Assignment #3: Expression poster (final version)

Back in February, I was working on the expression poster for my class. I got some feedback about what I could improve, but since the improvements were not required, I kept putting them off, and off, and off. And then of course I realized that it's April already

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Assignment #3: Expression poster (Part 2)

Last week, I came up with two poster ideas that I brought to class with me. Based on the comments that I received, I made some changes and created the final version. One of the complaints about my initial ideas was that the type was not psychedelic enough. I did

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Assignment #3: Expression poster (Part 1)

The next assignment for my class is a two-week project. The goal is to create a poster that promotes a song by "capturing the essence of that song typographically". The constraints are as follows: * Only text should be used on the poster (no images). * There should be at

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Assignment #2: Create three layouts almost breaking the traditional grid

For the second assignment, we were asked to use the same text as before, but instead of copying somebody else's traditional grid layout to make our own. An additional (but very important) constraint was to make some changes that would almost break the traditional grid, and yet it

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Assignment #1: Copy three layouts as closely as possible

It's that time of the year again, and I'm taking another design class. This time it's called "Typography-based design", and it's taught by Jeff Barlow, Starbucks Creative Manager. For the first assignment, we were given copies of three book spreads