The Art of Typography - taster!

With just under 2 weeks to go until my online course The Art of Typography kicks off I thought I'd share a little taster of the course with you.

In the fourth unit - Creating your own typeface, we look at a variety of ways of designing your own typefaces from digital apps to hand drawn to using mixed media. But firstly I encourage the students to really understand letterforms and their structure - from stroke widths, weights, x-heights and style. A great way to start doing this is by 'copying' existing letters. I should say copying in design is not something I encourage in anyway share or form but this is slightly different!

So start by either printing out this alphabet sheet that uses a variety of typefaces or simply try drawing them by eye. 

Once you start really looking and taking the time to analyse letters you'll start understanding them more.

Above are some of my sketches. Don't worry if yours aren't quite so neat, this isn't a competition to see who can draw the neatest letters! Try to see shapes within the letters and how the stroke widths relate to different parts. Make any extra sketches to help you do this like I've done on the 'n' and 'v'

In the course we then go on to create our very own letters and typefaces. To find out more information on the course please follow this link. And if you think you'd like to enrol use discount code ALPHA for 15% off. The course will be online forever from the 14th June and I'll be giving feedback during the first 3 weeks of it's launch. Hope you can join in the fun!