Hoefler & Frere-Jones

Hands-on classes in typeface design are notoriously hard to come by. Those interested in learning the craft have either to content themselves with a one-hour workshop at a professional conference, or commit themselves to a year of graduate school abroad. But this month, the Book Arts Center at Wells College Summer Institute is hosting a one-week class in typeface design with Sara Soskolne, Senior Typeface Designer at H&FJ. The class is limited to ten students, promising a rare chance to work with a professional type designer one-on-one.

The facilities boast large classrooms dedicated to lettering arts and digital imaging (all blissfully air-conditioned), and those with broader interests in the book arts will find two binderies, two press rooms, and seven Vandercook proofing presses. Those with broader interests still will find Wells College handsomely placed on New York’s Lake Cayuga, suggesting post-typographic swimming and birdwatching, magnificent sunsets, and fireflies by the kilowatt. Bring your “Co-Ed Naked Intramural Kerning” t-shirt.

Registration is now open: contact Nancy Gil, Summer Institute Director. And soon! —JH

Photo: Erik van Blokland

When we first met at the ATypI conference in 1989, Erik van Blokland, Just van Rossum and I were branded the “young turks” of typography, presumably because we were fifteen years younger than ATypI’s next-youngest member. Erik and Just were already notorious for their Beowolf project, which hacked the PostScript format in order to produce self-randomizing letterforms; this mischievous bit of culture jamming was enough to endear them to me, and to a generation of designers who have followed their work ever since.

Beowolf (and its sister font, BeoSans) are now an established part of typographic lore, and both rightfully received attention in the opening exhibit of the world’s first Graphic Design Museum in Breda. The place is swimming in typography (like the Netherlands in general), but it’s especially gratifying to see that in this new installation, visitors can experience BeoSans’ two-dimensional letterforms with the benefit of the fourth dimension as well. The addition of a timeline makes the faces’ randomness seem as natural an attribute as size, color, weight, or width, hinting at a future in which our screen-driven civilization could come to regard mutability as an integral part of the typographic experience. As always, I’m curious to see where Erik and Just’s original thinking will ultimately take us. —JH

If you missed Tobias's Typographic Walking Tour last September, and weren't one of the 22 lucky callers to register for his 2008 encore performance, you've one more chance. Come to the 2008 FUSE conference, April 13-16 at the Chelsea Piers, where Tobias joins Malcolm Gladwell, Stefan Sagmeister, Debbie Millman, Chip Kidd and other sharp tacks for a three-day exploration of design and culture. The Type Tour begins April 13 at 11:00, and places are limited! —JH