I think the one-year master’s programs from Reading and KABK are awesome.
With the caveat that, at least in terms of the Reading MATD programme, the content is strongly focused on type design, not font making, and in my experience graduates come out with minimal technical understanding unless they supplemented the curriculum with some self-education in that area.
I am far from making a living out of type (not even sure that day will come) but I still recommend that you try to learn type design.
Reason is: even if you “fail” to become a full-time, cash-flow-positive type designer, you will be a much better design professional thanks to type.
Type design will require you to…
Train your eyes to really see shapes
Obsess over details few people care about
Develop a strong culture of design history
Think in consistent systems
Find ways to automate your workflow
Learn a bit of code
Rework, rework, rework
If not through royalties, these things will pay off eventually. And you might have found a fulfilling hobby along the way.
Regarding education: I don't think that a design degree is needed to become a type designer. YES, some diplomas will give you an unfair advantage over the "competition", especially at the beginning of your career. But there are other ways to get there.
If you're looking for a solid introduction to the craft, maybe consider a summer program like Type@Paris for example?
For those of you who are making a living (or any significant source of income) making fonts, would you recommend it to anyone who seems to like it?
The first thing I'd ask myself if I was to considering becoming a type designer is., 'does the job fit my temperament' or more specifically, ' can I work as a type designer and be satisfied with all that this career choice entails?'.
I began studying type design at University in Australia before moving to England for a year to undertake the Reading University's MATD program. My journey involved relocating from Australia to the UK, followed by relocating permanently to Canada to work with Tiro Typeworks, and now I'm based in Poland. What I'm trying to express is consider if you want to be a type designer by asking yourself how far you're willing to relocate, financially invest, or give up to pursue this goal. This can be overlooked in our industry, and speaking retrospectively, I question if I'd have become a type designer given the personal sacrifices of missing family as they get older without me, and missing the cultural customs of my birth country.
Every type designer's story is different and begins from a slightly different foundation. Do you have the mindset to believe in yourself and start your own foundry? great! Do you you have the dedication to learn type without the need to relocate to obtain formal education? Then all power to you. I don't have this mindset so I followed the formal education route to become a full time type designer. Other type designers are self taught and live in their home countries. I do not. There are moments when working in type can become an extremely lonely pursuit.
Type design can be a fruitful career choice resulting in creative growth and a better understanding of the craft. The best advise I would offer myself if I was in your position would be to pay attention to where you invest your time and what aspects of type appeal to you. If you enjoy doing outline work all day then find a career predominantly doing this. If you love the back-end production stuff, work with type designers or foundries who would rather delegate this work to anyone but themselves. Im short, pay attention to your actions, follow what interests you, and always remain open to learning regardless of how specialised your skillset becomes. There's always something to learn in our industry.
Take my comments with a grain of salt as other type designers will have had a drastically different journey.
I began focusing on type in 2004, when I was an undergraduate in a prestigious Graphic Design undergraduate course in London. Like many others who have posted here, I went on to do a postgraduate course specifically in typeface design.
I did eventually graduate, but I had (due only to my own faults) a rough time with it, and up until the last term it wasn't clear to me or anyone else, I think, that I would actually hand in sufficient work to pass the class. But I did learn, during that time, what "an education" was really about, and where I had some gaps, which I went on to try to fill by myself.
In these last 20 years, I've met, and even worked directly with, people up and down the industry - from those in the USA who started in the 70s as full time type designers and haven't stopped, to those born and raised in peripheral nations in this century who are just getting started; from those at the largest international type firms, to those proudly independent.
Overall, I think those who succeed at making a life from type, are generally easy to describe as "an educated person." That is to say, they had an excellent secondary education, like at the high school level. What they studied before type design at a tertiary level (be that at a college/university undergraduate course, or by self-study into a specific subject) is not so relevant. While a college degree in Graphic Design tends to be the most common, I think this tends to mask a prior strong secondary education in those that succeed. It is correlation, not causation.
It is common around the world that students aged 16 to 18 that are recognized by their schoolteachers as academically advanced are offered college level classes within the high school setting. So, I think a world-class, truly elite-level, secondary education, is much more broadly interdisciplinary than any Graphic Design degree, and covers many subjects: It will cover the artistic, technological, linguistic, business, historical, cultural, rhetorical, logical, requirements so sufficiently as to then go on to be a formidable type designer.
I don't think a Graphic Design degree (or any degree, really) will provide such a base; the point of tertiary education is already too late for that. And where colleges provide "introduction to" classes, they are at best equal to those at the top high school level – and I've seen such classes that were not.
Where I've seen people struggle to cement a career in type, I would generalize that it is because they lack one or more foundational pieces of a strong secondary education, and formed a self-image that is self-limiting such that they are unable to fill that gap by themselves. "I am not a programmer" is a self fulfilling prophecy. Yet no child who was taught programming in junior high school could think this, and you can be sure that children attending elite private boarding schools like Deerfield have access to a makerspace on-site.
So, these folks get frustrated, and turn to another career path. And that gap is there because they are coming from what is objectively not the upper social class - which is to say, a typical middle class, with a typical secondary education - which most people would say is just fine. Put a different way, if a "good" school isn't an elite school, it isn't good enough. Good schools teach young people just enough to be good employees.
What is an educated person? I came across this screed on it the other day:
Twelve Reflections on an Educated Person, by John Taylor Gatto
An educated person writes his own script through life; he is not a character in a government or corporation play, nor does he mouth the words of any intellectual's utopian fantasy. Education and intelligence are not the same things. The educated person is self-determined to a large degree.
Time doesn't hang heavily on an educated person's hands. She can be alone. She is seldom at a loss for what to do with time.
An educated person possesses a blueprint of personal value, a unique philosophy which tends toward the absolute. It is not plastically relative altering to suit present company or circumstances. Because of this absolute aspect, an educated person knows at all times who he is, what he will tolerate, where to find peace. But at the same time, an educated person is aware of and respects community values, and even values strange to his experience.
As Jefferson said, an educated person knows her rights and knows how to defend those rights.
As Jefferson said, an educated person knows the ways of the human heart so well he's tough to cheat or fool.
As Jefferson said, an educated person possesses useful knowledge. She can ride, hunt, sail a boat (and build one), build a house, grow food, etc.
An educated person understands the dynamics of relationships, partially from being well-read in great literature; as a consequence, he can form healthy relationships wherever he is.
An educated person understands and accepts her own mortality; she understands that without death and ageing, nothing would have any meaning. An educated person learns from all her ages, even from the last hours of her life.
An educated person can discover truth for himself; he has intense awareness of the profound significance of being (as distinguished from doing), and the utter importance of being here and now.
An educated person can figure out how to be useful.
An educated person has the capacity to create: New things, new experiences, new ideas.
Education is built around ten cores: the metaphysical reality, the historical reality, the personal reality, the physical world within reach, the physical world outside personal awareness, the possibilities of association, an understanding of vocation, home-making, the challenges of adulthood met, the challenges of loss, ageing and death met.
If you become such a person, becoming a type designer is not so hard.
Personally, I believe my high school education was lacklustre and I've fought tooth and nail to relocate myself (geographically and educationally) from where I was schooled.
I'd be interested to hear the differences in 'struggles' between type designers who began 20 years ago vs those who entering the industry today.
I can relate to so many posts in this forum now. Personally, I think it's a good idea to start with something in high demand, such as UX or programming, and then explore the possibility of transitioning into typeface design. I completed a Reading program two years ago, and it was quite realistic; many of us were concerned about finding a type-related job in the future. Perhaps the landscape has changed compared to 20 years ago. So, my advice is that if you want to pursue your passion, be realistic. Sometimes it's about being in the right place at the right time with the right skills. If luck doesn't favor you in the type design field, consider pursuing in-demand jobs, especially in tech, and see if you can eventually become known as the 'type expert.' Good luck!
Well certainly i'm not the most qualified person to say a lot of things about life or eighter about education, but your comment certainly got my attention.
I never heard any mention to type design during my years in high school, at some point i even had a certain bias towards those people that were ""graphic designers"", that in my head were lazy people that use to make poor jobs in photoshop stretching images of low resulution and literally flooding the streets and the walls with propaganda of useless products...
But at the same time i always use to watch documentaries, tv shows about history and arts even brazil's goverment propraganda that during 2010's had a strong artistical weight speacially those ones directed to the erradication of poverty and hunger, i always thouht they were beatiful some how, they could inspire emotion, but i had no ideia which type of person/professional produced that type of content but in my mind certanly wasn't the lazy "graphic designers" that i mentioned.
time has passed since and i found my pockets empty, at the same period i got to the realization of what was the job market and how school were just a bigger plan of some farmers feeding the cows ( not trying to get in politics but personally i'm not an advocate for communism at all but certainly capitalism has it flaws) since finishing high school i got a hard time trying to find a job, i have a questioning personality and as always i make questions that people aren't happy to answer specially in corporate world, i like to learn i like to exhange ideias and knowledge but i have no respect to an imposed hierachy or invisible limits that i should or shouldn't talk.
Since i got into programming and found out that i hated it, such an austeric environament... and then i found some people talking about ui/ux design i bought some books and slowly and was learning about graphic design, and after some books i found out that the people that make beautiful fonts, posters, disc covers, books, signage were those so called graphic/type designers at first i questioned but how... well i got the answer with one of the first modernist graphic designers in brazil, well we have two types of aplied visual arts, the commercial artists and the graphic designers and besides both learning the same concepts both produce different outcomes with the first being a really poor in moral and professional values and literally someone sold out, since i found the manifest "first things first" i found myself, i found a new north a north that was what i wanted to be, finally, a graphic designer with a plus i wanted to do the fonts that since i was a kid i always percieved some being nicer than others, now being a apprendice of type design and a former graphic designer that wants to persue a second degree in architecture, how financially is going to happen idk.
But all this commentary to say that type design is a big rabbit hole by itself, with few resources compared to other areas online, and anyone that tries to persue a carrer on the matter is most likely an outsider to a bigger or less degree and your comment is a concrete realisation of what any outsider probably already realised.
im not trying to say too much, just things that came in my mind, at the end of the day it might not even make sense to you or anyone reading this.
sorry for the possible typos and for anyone interested in a great documentary that's a great recommendation and please pay attention to how the graphic designer made such a amazing abstract representation of niemier organic curves and how niemier presents his architecture and oposes his ideas to his master LeCorbusier.
Comments
I am far from making a living out of type (not even sure that day will come) but I still recommend that you try to learn type design.
Reason is: even if you “fail” to become a full-time, cash-flow-positive type designer, you will be a much better design professional thanks to type.
Type design will require you to…
If not through royalties, these things will pay off eventually. And you might have found a fulfilling hobby along the way.
Regarding education: I don't think that a design degree is needed to become a type designer. YES, some diplomas will give you an unfair advantage over the "competition", especially at the beginning of your career. But there are other ways to get there.
If you're looking for a solid introduction to the craft, maybe consider a summer program like Type@Paris for example?
Best of luck
I began studying type design at University in Australia before moving to England for a year to undertake the Reading University's MATD program. My journey involved relocating from Australia to the UK, followed by relocating permanently to Canada to work with Tiro Typeworks, and now I'm based in Poland. What I'm trying to express is consider if you want to be a type designer by asking yourself how far you're willing to relocate, financially invest, or give up to pursue this goal. This can be overlooked in our industry, and speaking retrospectively, I question if I'd have become a type designer given the personal sacrifices of missing family as they get older without me, and missing the cultural customs of my birth country.
Every type designer's story is different and begins from a slightly different foundation. Do you have the mindset to believe in yourself and start your own foundry? great! Do you you have the dedication to learn type without the need to relocate to obtain formal education? Then all power to you. I don't have this mindset so I followed the formal education route to become a full time type designer. Other type designers are self taught and live in their home countries. I do not. There are moments when working in type can become an extremely lonely pursuit.
Type design can be a fruitful career choice resulting in creative growth and a better understanding of the craft. The best advise I would offer myself if I was in your position would be to pay attention to where you invest your time and what aspects of type appeal to you. If you enjoy doing outline work all day then find a career predominantly doing this. If you love the back-end production stuff, work with type designers or foundries who would rather delegate this work to anyone but themselves. Im short, pay attention to your actions, follow what interests you, and always remain open to learning regardless of how specialised your skillset becomes. There's always something to learn in our industry.
Take my comments with a grain of salt as other type designers will have had a drastically different journey.
Good luck!
I did eventually graduate, but I had (due only to my own faults) a rough time with it, and up until the last term it wasn't clear to me or anyone else, I think, that I would actually hand in sufficient work to pass the class. But I did learn, during that time, what "an education" was really about, and where I had some gaps, which I went on to try to fill by myself.
In these last 20 years, I've met, and even worked directly with, people up and down the industry - from those in the USA who started in the 70s as full time type designers and haven't stopped, to those born and raised in peripheral nations in this century who are just getting started; from those at the largest international type firms, to those proudly independent.
Overall, I think those who succeed at making a life from type, are generally easy to describe as "an educated person." That is to say, they had an excellent secondary education, like at the high school level. What they studied before type design at a tertiary level (be that at a college/university undergraduate course, or by self-study into a specific subject) is not so relevant. While a college degree in Graphic Design tends to be the most common, I think this tends to mask a prior strong secondary education in those that succeed. It is correlation, not causation.
It is common around the world that students aged 16 to 18 that are recognized by their schoolteachers as academically advanced are offered college level classes within the high school setting. So, I think a world-class, truly elite-level, secondary education, is much more broadly interdisciplinary than any Graphic Design degree, and covers many subjects: It will cover the artistic, technological, linguistic, business, historical, cultural, rhetorical, logical, requirements so sufficiently as to then go on to be a formidable type designer.
I don't think a Graphic Design degree (or any degree, really) will provide such a base; the point of tertiary education is already too late for that. And where colleges provide "introduction to" classes, they are at best equal to those at the top high school level – and I've seen such classes that were not.
Where I've seen people struggle to cement a career in type, I would generalize that it is because they lack one or more foundational pieces of a strong secondary education, and formed a self-image that is self-limiting such that they are unable to fill that gap by themselves. "I am not a programmer" is a self fulfilling prophecy. Yet no child who was taught programming in junior high school could think this, and you can be sure that children attending elite private boarding schools like Deerfield have access to a makerspace on-site.
So, these folks get frustrated, and turn to another career path. And that gap is there because they are coming from what is objectively not the upper social class - which is to say, a typical middle class, with a typical secondary education - which most people would say is just fine. Put a different way, if a "good" school isn't an elite school, it isn't good enough. Good schools teach young people just enough to be good employees.
What is an educated person? I came across this screed on it the other day:
An educated person writes his own script through life; he is not a character in a government or corporation play, nor does he mouth the words of any intellectual's utopian fantasy. Education and intelligence are not the same things. The educated person is self-determined to a large degree.
Time doesn't hang heavily on an educated person's hands. She can be alone. She is seldom at a loss for what to do with time.
An educated person possesses a blueprint of personal value, a unique philosophy which tends toward the absolute. It is not plastically relative altering to suit present company or circumstances. Because of this absolute aspect, an educated person knows at all times who he is, what he will tolerate, where to find peace. But at the same time, an educated person is aware of and respects community values, and even values strange to his experience.
As Jefferson said, an educated person knows her rights and knows how to defend those rights.
As Jefferson said, an educated person knows the ways of the human heart so well he's tough to cheat or fool.
As Jefferson said, an educated person possesses useful knowledge. She can ride, hunt, sail a boat (and build one), build a house, grow food, etc.
An educated person understands the dynamics of relationships, partially from being well-read in great literature; as a consequence, he can form healthy relationships wherever he is.
An educated person understands and accepts her own mortality; she understands that without death and ageing, nothing would have any meaning. An educated person learns from all her ages, even from the last hours of her life.
An educated person can discover truth for himself; he has intense awareness of the profound significance of being (as distinguished from doing), and the utter importance of being here and now.
An educated person can figure out how to be useful.
An educated person has the capacity to create: New things, new experiences, new ideas.
Education is built around ten cores: the metaphysical reality, the historical reality, the personal reality, the physical world within reach, the physical world outside personal awareness, the possibilities of association, an understanding of vocation, home-making, the challenges of adulthood met, the challenges of loss, ageing and death met.
Personally, I believe my high school education was lacklustre and I've fought tooth and nail to relocate myself (geographically and educationally) from where I was schooled.
I'd be interested to hear the differences in 'struggles' between type designers who began 20 years ago vs those who entering the industry today.
Well certainly i'm not the most qualified person to say a lot of things about life or eighter about education, but your comment certainly got my attention.
I never heard any mention to type design during my years in high school, at some point i even had a certain bias towards those people that were ""graphic designers"", that in my head were lazy people that use to make poor jobs in photoshop stretching images of low resulution and literally flooding the streets and the walls with propaganda of useless products...
But at the same time i always use to watch documentaries, tv shows about history and arts even brazil's goverment propraganda that during 2010's had a strong artistical weight speacially those ones directed to the erradication of poverty and hunger, i always thouht they were beatiful some how, they could inspire emotion, but i had no ideia which type of person/professional produced that type of content but in my mind certanly wasn't the lazy "graphic designers" that i mentioned.
time has passed since and i found my pockets empty, at the same period i got to the realization of what was the job market and how school were just a bigger plan of some farmers feeding the cows ( not trying to get in politics but personally i'm not an advocate for communism at all but certainly capitalism has it flaws) since finishing high school i got a hard time trying to find a job, i have a questioning personality and as always i make questions that people aren't happy to answer specially in corporate world, i like to learn i like to exhange ideias and knowledge but i have no respect to an imposed hierachy or invisible limits that i should or shouldn't talk.
Since i got into programming and found out that i hated it, such an austeric environament... and then i found some people talking about ui/ux design i bought some books and slowly and was learning about graphic design, and after some books i found out that the people that make beautiful fonts, posters, disc covers, books, signage were those so called graphic/type designers at first i questioned but how... well i got the answer with one of the first modernist graphic designers in brazil, well we have two types of aplied visual arts, the commercial artists and the graphic designers and besides both learning the same concepts both produce different outcomes with the first being a really poor in moral and professional values and literally someone sold out, since i found the manifest "first things first" i found myself, i found a new north a north that was what i wanted to be, finally, a graphic designer with a plus i wanted to do the fonts that since i was a kid i always percieved some being nicer than others, now being a apprendice of type design and a former graphic designer that wants to persue a second degree in architecture, how financially is going to happen idk.
But all this commentary to say that type design is a big rabbit hole by itself, with few resources compared to other areas online, and anyone that tries to persue a carrer on the matter is most likely an outsider to a bigger or less degree and your comment is a concrete realisation of what any outsider probably already realised.
im not trying to say too much, just things that came in my mind, at the end of the day it might not even make sense to you or anyone reading this.
sorry for the possible typos and for anyone interested in a great documentary that's a great recommendation and please pay attention to how the graphic designer made such a amazing abstract representation of niemier organic curves and how niemier presents his architecture and oposes his ideas to his master LeCorbusier.
Youtube subtitles are working.
Oscar Niemeyer: A Vida é um Sopro ( Completo) /Life is a Breath (Full )/english subtitles - YouTube
Have a great day!