Not really, of course. Though awesome photos of some yet-unknown lettering class, probably in England. Thanks to the blog Old Chum. I’ll update if I find the source.

Edit: Old Chum says: “Signwritten Art by A.J. Lewery. This photo is from Laird Art School 1955”. So I was only 25 years off!

Sorry for the Radio silence, everybody, we had a busy past couple of weeks followed by a relaxing week of vacation. I’ll start from the beginning:

We finally finished our Paul van der Laan revival projects. I was extremely proud of everyone in our class on the high quality of all our revivals. Many added a bold, an italic/oblique, or both to the assignment. I struggled a little bit in the beginning to decide what direction to take so I don’t have such amazing things, but I am grateful for the experience never the less. 

Here is an issuu version of the specimen/report. 

It’s named Planegg after the original book that I found it in. Planegg is a small German town, and the book is a very Art Nouveau play about the town and nature (as far as I can tell). The entire book is typeset in a typeface by Peter Behrens named Behrens-Schrift, who designed his typeface in 1902 to be a sort of organic amalgam between Fraktur and Antiqua scripts. Paul asked me kindly not to set my entire book in Planegg, so the text is one of my favorite sans serifs, Whitney by H&FJ.

After that, we had a very exciting event with Typeradio and Indra’s Saarbrücken students. The Saarbrücken students were given 12 typefaces designed by 12 Dutch typeface designers (most of them being our teachers) to create sound pieces of, and the sound pieces in turn were given to us for us to create typefaces from, not knowing the original typeface. Some of them were very hard to pin down. Thankfully, Marina brought her camera to the event, so head on over to the Flickr group to get a good look.

Immediately afterward, Katie and I left for Paris and London (4 days in each) and we had a wonderful time. (We unfortunately don’t have so many together because as it often goes, one of us would be taking a photo of the other).

After we returned to Holland we made a small afternoon trip to Utrecht to see the Dick Bruna Huis and the Rietveld Schröderhuis, both taken care of by the Centraal Museum of Utrecht. Dick Bruna is the creator of Miffy (Nijntje in The Netherlands) and friends, as well as a very nice graphic designer. The Rietveld Schröderhuis, as you might remember from your Art History textbooks, is (probably) the world’s only pure example of De Stijl architecture. 

From here on out, class-wise, it is all in for our thesis. I’m building a blog to to take care of only thesis research, so I will share a link to that when it is ready. We’re all going to be terribly busy until July; I believe there is only around 116 more days left.

stewf asked: When did Type & Media get the abbreviation "T]M" and why?

This is probably one of the main questions we get as members of this program. As I understand it, the answer lies in our professors’ generation.

A little background: most people who know about t]m is that it began as a program started by Gerrit Noordzij. In the 1960s he began to teach at KABK, and in the 1970s he developed a “letter design” program. Most (but absolutely not all) of our teachers now were a part of his program in the ’70s and ’80s. 

In 1980, Frank Blokland, Jelle Bosma and Albert-Jan Pool started a “letter club” to help pool resources, discuss ideas, and get feedback on their design work. You see, in the 1980s (I am far too young to know any of this first-hand, mind you) it was difficult for independent letter designers to get their designs accepted by large foundries; just designing typefaces was costly because the equipment itself was costly, and any hard-earned experience gained from dealing with foundries was invaluable. The odds were on their side if they stuck together, and it worked.  

In 1986 the group consisted of the 3 founders plus Petr van Blokland (no relation to Frank), Henk van Leyden, Peter Matthias Noordzij (GN’s son), and Marie-Cécile Noordzij-Pulles (Peter’s wife) when they adopted the name “Letters]”. More people joined in the coming years, including Just van Rossum, Luc(as) de Groot, Bart de Haas, and Peter Verheul.

So the answer to the question is we get our bracket in honor of Letters], the organization that helped out many of our teachers.  

This is just a brief overview—for those wanting to learn more, they should turn to none other than Dutch Type by the indomitable Jan Middendorp. The history of our program and our teachers essentially starts on page 175, Letters] is specifically on pp. 180–1.

A list of current lecturers for t]m is here.

Linda pointed out to me about a week ago that I never explicitly said on this blog that I made it to America and back. Yes I did, but it took some trying. I took photos to illustrate:

The snow cleared up enough for the NS to run regularly about 2 days after our big snow, so surprisingly, they were not the problem.

After British Air cancelled my flight twice, I wasn’t going to chance them doing it again, so I booked the cheapest flight to the USA I could find, which was a Continental flight to Newark, NJ. Besides the leg room being minuscule (but really, on what airline is it not?), it was a good flight. Yes, the lady in front of me was watching Eat, Pray, Love. I attempted to work on my typefaces, and succeeded for about half an hour before I saw everyone watching the Star Trek movie and was tempted over to the dark side (OK, so I mixed sci-fi references, sue me).

Next up was an AMTRAK train from Newark to Philadelphia, about 1.75 hours. I had to book a business seat because the rest of the train was sold out before I cooked up this last minute scheme to get to the US. You might ask me, “Colin, where was it easier to work on typeface design, economy on the cheapest flight you could find, or business class on a train from NYC to Philly?” I would answer THEY ARE EQUALLY HORRIBLE. Business class seat, so not worth it.

One more train at for what was at about 2am for me. I miss taking the R5 SEPTA train, so this was actually enjoyable. I was glad to be back in Philadelphia.

(Yes, I am a public transport fan, why else would I take all these photos?)

But the break was real short. Within a week I was back on a flight to Amsterdam. This one took off and landed without any problems whatsoever. 

The week we got back was our review week. This is the week when all of our teachers go around and get to see our entire body of work. They see what we’ve improved on, what we’re capable of, and give us suggestions. Here’s what my corner looked like:

The thing I have to work the most on is the drawing. I just take a lot longer with analog things… Python I picked up really quickly, I think, and it was my favorite class. In the middle were the revival assignment and Peter Verheul’s contrast assignment; both of them were very helpful for teaching me how to design typefaces. The only way to learn is to do it over and over. I’m still working on both, will show them when they’re ‘finished’ by the end of the month.

We’re all getting ready for our daunting final project and each professor is trying his best to prepare us for what is going to come. We’re also working with Indra’s class and Type Radio on an assignment. Lots to look forward to!