Workshops & Tours
Attendees of the Typographics conference get a 10% discount on Type@Cooper’s workshops from June 12–22.
A promotional discount code will be found on the PDF of your conference ticket. Apply the code during workshop registration to receive your discount.
Tours
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Continents, Harbors & Celestial Bodies: Rare and Antique Maps at Martayan Lan with James Roy
Throughout centuries of exploration and colonization, cartographers painstakingly measured, drew and labeled land masses, waterways, and the heavens. Highly skilled printers, engravers, letterers, and typesetters made travel conceivable, oceans navigable, exotic places fascinating and the lust for foreign resources irresistible, for better and for worse. By wood relief, by copper engraving, and by chromolithography, richly colored and illustrated maps of the world became indispensable. From each era, not only is the understanding of the world developing, but the crafting of letters and sophisticated and specialized typography evolved.
James Roy of Martayan Lan, leading dealers in fine antique maps and rare books will welcome a group of Typographics festival goers and show a selection of amazing antique maps in their East 55th Street gallery providing a personal tour of the highlights of their offerings.
Wed, June 13, 11am–1pm
$25
Details and registration -
Type in Times Square: the Spectacular Signs of Artkraft Strauss with Tama Starr and Arthur Boehm
Throughout the twentieth century, giant illuminated signs defined Times Square. Artkraft Strauss built nearly all of them. Working by hand in metal, paint and neon tubing, the company created marvels of flashing imagery and animated type. Displays such as the fifties’ north-Square stack of Admiral TV, Canadian Club, and Chevrolet, among many others, made type cavort, talk, sell. The company was also responsible for the oversize marquee typography of the Square’s first-run movie houses, which created indelible come-ons to the pleasure-seeking crowd, plus landmark signs at other city sites.
The Artkraft Strauss archive, now at the main branch of the New York Public Library, contains photos, blueprints, designs and other memorabilia of the signs’ creation, from conception through installation. They are typological time-travel. Led by Tama Starr, the president of Artkraft Strauss, and Arthur Boehm, the company’s archivist, the tour will visit the archive to see first-hand the visual materials that helped create the Times Square dream.
More detailed information about meeting place will be sent to registered participants closer to the date of the event.
Wed, June 13, 6–8pm
$25
Details and registration -
Constructivist Typography in the Met’s Watson Library with Jared Ash
Thomas J. Watson Library is the central research library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Open to all researchers who are college age and above, Watson’s collection of more than 1 million books and periodicals relating to the history of art and visual culture is one of the most comprehensive in the world. Join Watson’s Slavic and Special Collections Librarian, Jared Ash, for an introduction to the library, and a presentation of works in Watson’s collection featuring Constructivist typography. Through original editions and facsimiles, participants will be able to study the spread of Constructivist letterforms from their roots among the Russian avant-garde, to a worldwide phenomenon.
This tour is full but you can join the waitlist.
Thu, June 14, 11am–12:30pm
$30
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Walking Tour: Brooklyn Letters with Alexander Tochilovsky
Join Alexander Tochilovsky on a guided walking tour through one of the most lettering-heavy sections of Brooklyn. The path winds through four separate neighborhoods (Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, and Bed-Stuy), whose vibrant history can be traced through its signs. Along the way you will encounter store signs, foundry marks, ornate building names, graffiti, elaborate “no parking” signs, and many other attractive letters. Countless encounters with photogenic pieces of lettering guaranteed!
This tour is full.
Sun, June 17, 10am–1pm
Free
Details and registration -
Beyond Trajan: Greek and Roman Inscriptions at the Metropolitan Museum with Christopher Calderhead
This event is co-presented with The Society of Scribes.
Classical lettering is often thought of as something formal and traditional—but that’s only one aspect of the rich writing traditions of the Greek and Roman world. This tour will explore the wide stylistic range of letterforms from ancient Greece and Rome. Lettering on stone, ceramic, bronze, and papyrus show how materials shaped the forms of letters, and how members of the different social classes used lettering in their daily lives. The range of artifacts we will examine includes personal objects, commercial manufactured goods, government documents, and public monuments in stone.
Please note that there will be a $5 entrance fee at the museum. The cost of this tour will be $25 to register.
Sun, June 17, 11am–12:30pm
30
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Curator’s tour of the Herb Lubalin Study Center with Alexander Tochilovsky
Cooper Union’s Herb Lubalin Study Center is a treasure-filled archive of graphic design ephemera by influential designers such as Herb Lubalin, Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, and many others. Join the Center’s curator Alexander Tochilovsky for a presentation of selected materials and a glimpse into the highlights of the collection. The event will give participants a rare opportunity to see and handle all of the ephemera as well as to learn about the important background details about the designers and their work.
This tour is full but you can join the waitlist.
Mon, June 18, 11am–1pm
$25
Details and registration -
Studio Tour: Russell Maret’s Typographic Laboratory with Russel Maret
This tour will take a look at Russell Maret’s efforts to make new metal typefaces for letterpress printing. Participants will look at and print from some of Russell’s typefaces, as well as page through a selection of the alphabetical treatises and type specimens that he has produced in his Brooklyn studio.
This tour is full.
Wed, June 20, 6–7:30pm
Free
Details and registration -
Curator’s Tour: Lubalin 100 with Alexander Tochilovsky
Join Lubalin Center Curator Alexander Tochilovsky on this guided tour of the Lubalin 100 exhibition in the 41 Gallery at The Cooper Union.
Wed, June 20, 6:30–8pm
$25
Details and registration
Workshops
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Figures with John Downer
Quick recognition of individual figures is important. We read digits one-by-one … and not as “word shapes.” John Downer will patiently guide this class through a series of exercises to overcome common pitfalls when designing numerals, and will show various tricks for making numerical characters read well at close range and at long range.
Sat–Sun, June 9–10, 10am–5pm
$440
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Sign Painting with John Downer
John Downer’s sign painting career began in the late 1960s and was instrumental in steering his path toward type design. In this introductory course, he will teach the two main kinds of letterform construction which have traditionally been done with a brush: single-stroke and built-up. Students will learn the importance of paint consistency and brush control. The class will focus on rendering a few particular styles of capital letters that were commonly used in American sign painting during the 20th century. Script lettering will be addressed in the final day and a half.
Mon–Thu, June 11–14, 9am–4pm
$880
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Movable Type: Animation for Typographers with Todd Goldstein
In this 2-day crash course, you’ll learn the basics of Adobe After Effects as well as simple animation principles and their effect on typography and meaning. Through a series of lectures and hands-on projects, you’ll learn techniques for making your static compositions come to life—how to craft motion styles, how to fine-tune timing, how to tell a story through cause and effect—as well as an overview of After Effects’ arsenal of type-based effects. You’ll leave with a generous foundation in a wickedly fun new discipline, making motion a fundamental addition to your typographic toolkit.
This workshop is full but you can join the waitlist.
Mon–Tue, June 11–12, 9am–4pm
$440
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Rapid Prototyping for Graphic Designers with Petr van Blokland
In this workshop graphic designers, typographers and typeface designers will learn to develop efficient and powerful prototyping techniques including manual sketching, digital tools, and coding, with the goal of controlling the broadening and narrowing of options and directions a project may take.
Mon–Wed, June 11–13, 10am–5pm
$660
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Grids with Tânia Raposo
In this workshop we will go through the history of the different grid methods, we will be using pencil and tracing paper to analyse in-use grids from magazines and books, and you will learn how to create grids and how to keep your text aligned to it in Adobe InDesign.
Tue, June 12, 10am–5pm
$220
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Python – The Sequel with Andy Clymer, Frank Grießhammer
If you’ve taken an “Intro to Python” class (or two?) but haven’t kept up with programming on a regular basis, this workshop will help keep the momentum going. Over the course of two days, starting with a small Python language refresher, we will build new tools that can immediately be applied to your design work. The workshop will also serve as an introduction to the most popular code libraries type designers use to edit their fonts, make interfaces, and build proofs. Above all, the workshop aims to leave the students with the resources they need to really start using the Python language on a daily basis to strengthen their typeface design work.
Tue–Wed, June 12–13, 10am–5pm
$440
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Type Selector with Tânia Raposo
In this 1-day workshop you will learn how to look at typefaces up close to analyse their details and why they matter, how to pick the best typeface for your project and how pair it with others. You will have a better insight about language support, legibility studies, different kinds of typeface financing and logistics.
Wed, June 13, 10am–5pm
$220
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Typeface Design for Non-Type Designers with Matteo Bologna
Get a crash course in designing type from Matteo Bologna, Creative Director of award-winning studio Mucca Design, and guest instructors Georg Seifert and Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer, the masterminds behind Glyphs app. In this class you will learn the basics of designing and generating a typeface with Adobe Illustrator and the font-design software Glyphs (Mac only). Go beyond choosing the same fonts from the type menu to creating your own typefaces.
This workshop is full but you can join the waitlist.
Thu, June 14, 9am–5pm
$260
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Micro Typography with Tânia Raposo
In this 1 day workshop you will acquire typographic skills on the micro level — how to solve intricate typographic hierarchies, and how to fine-tune long passages of text. You will learn how and when to use various kinds of dashes, get acquainted with OpenType features and get to know all the strange characters in your glyph palette.
Thu, June 14, 10am–5pm
$220
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Build the KernTroller with Andy Clymer
It’s become more common for designers to create their own tools in software, but it’s also never before been easier to create your own custom hardware controllers and interfaces. This four-hour workshop will cover the fundamentals of building basic electronic circuits controlled by Python code, using the Adafruit Trinket M0 development board.
To learn more about this workshop see the registration page.
Thu, June 14, 2–6pm
$110
Details and registration -
Drawing for Interpolation with Andy Clymer
Interpolation is a process most commonly used to create intermediate styles within a family of type (draw the “Light” and “Bold” weights and get a blend of the “Medium” for free), and it’s the backbone for how the new class of Variable Fonts function. Few techniques offer more benefit to the type designer than knowing how to construct drawings in a way that anticipates how they might need to work for interpolation. This one-day workshop will cover what you need to know about constructing outlines for interpolation, planning a design space of masters to draw, and will take a low-level look at how points move while interpolating.
Sun, June 17, 10am–5pm
$220
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Python Scripting for Graphic Designers with Petr van Blokland
During this one-day workshop, graphic designers learn from scratch how to script micro and macro design process tasks. Petr van Blokland with lead participants in a series of short specific assignments, related to common tasks so designers learn to recognize patterns that can be automated…
Read a complete description of this workshop on the registration page.
Sun, June 17, 10am–5pm
Free
Details and registration -
Script Logos and Wordmarks with Ken Barber
It’s crucial for logos to project a unique identity, particularly in today’s competitive marketplace. Script lettering styles offer a diverse range of options for creating marks that are distinctly individual—from elegant to easy-going, or spirited to stylish. In this workshop, participants will learn how to build on a variety of versatile script styles that are especially suited for drawing one-of-a-kind logos and wordmarks.
Mon–Thu, June 18–21, 9am–4pm
$880
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Pinstriping with Alan Johnson
The perfect complement to brush lettering for personalizing all kinds of machines, vehicles and musical instruments, pinstriping is a skill that takes a steady hand and a lot of practice. Like lettering, it’s one of those things you want to learn from a true master.
In this two-day workshop, students will learn traditional sword brush stroke techniques, palette paint consistency, loading the brush with materials and methods to create long lines and designs. Introduction to a variety of brush styles for intricate scrolling and fine details.
Mon–Tue, June 18–19, 10am–5pm
$440
Details and registration
More workshops & tours are being planned and will be announced in the coming weeks. For updates and announcements, join the Typographics mailing list and follow @TypographicsNYC on Twitter.
