How do you teach type design?

"what one needs to learn is how to see. That is, to look at shapes and understand their structures"

I believe type-design education benefits from embracing a diversity of perspectives and methodologies.

Many type-design courses begin with individual letterforms, sometimes using writing as their primary point of departure and sometimes approaching them independently, before proceeding through iterative refinement of spacing and proportions. This craft-based approach has proven its value over time. It develops visual judgment through repeated observation and refinement, allowing students to internalize typographic conventions through practice.

At some point, however, students may begin asking not only how things are done, but why they are done that way. Understanding the structural principles behind typographic conventions can transform design from a process of imitation into one of informed choice. Rather than limiting creativity, such understanding expands the range of possibilities available to the designer.

A type designer can work convincingly within established conventions of rhythm, proportion, contrast, and structure, creating typographic harmony without necessarily questioning their origins. Conventions remain effective even when their underlying logic is invisible. I summarize this with what I call the Donald Duck Doctrine (or Ducktrine): if something looks enough like Donald Duck, moves enough like Donald Duck, and quacks enough like Donald Duck, it will be recognized as Donald Duck. Likewise, a typeface can successfully embody a typographic tradition without its designer fully understanding the structural principles from which that tradition emerged.

My educational approach is grounded in research into the structural relationships between medieval and Humanistic writing traditions and the development of early movable-type forms, from Gutenberg’s textura to Renaissance roman and italic type. This research demonstrates that the transition from writing to movable type was not primarily a process of iterative optical correction, but rather a process of making explicit, formalizing, and standardizing the intrinsic structural regularity already present in the written forms to meet the requirements of movable-type production.

In this view, standardization does not impose structure on writing; it reveals, codifies, and systematizes structural relationships that were already there. The LetterModeller application embodies this interpretation, making these underlying structural principles explicit and available for study.

Consequently, my educational approach brings together practice, history, and theory. It certainly addresses optical correction and technical decisions, but it also examines the historical development of typographic systems and the logic behind their standardization. Most importantly, it explores how understanding these structures changes the way designers perceive type and, ultimately, how readers experience it. Learning to design type therefore also means learning to recognize the organizational principles underlying typographic form.

This research-based approach places greater emphasis on analysis before production. Students may therefore spend more time developing an understanding of the structural principles behind typographic form before producing finished designs. In return, they gain a systematic understanding of the design process that supports more deliberate decisions. It is not intended as a replacement for established methods, but as a complementary perspective for students who wish to understand not only how type is made, but why it has developed the way it has.

More information about this approach can be found here.