12 Things I Learned In Type School

I didn't realize that you could go to school to study typography, although it makes sense. Peter Cho did and has written an article about twelve things he learned in type school. Some of them are what anyone would expect to learn about themselves after an intensive study program; others are about some of the finer points of typography. I found it fascinating.

[ 8 ] The importance of counter shapes

Counters are the shapes inside letters, both closed shapes like e and o, but also the concave regions in m and n. It follows from what we learned about positive and negative space that counters are important, but their importance in establishing a visual system extends beyond a single font style. In a workshop in June, Andy Clymer explained how punch cuts were tapered, and the same punch could be used for a larger size by cutting deeper into the lead. When designing different weights of a family, you should think like a punchcutter and preserve the counter shapes so the letterforms feel related.

Sasha Tochilovsky also brought up a related idea in his workshop in March. When you’re pairing different fonts to use in a design, you can compare the counter shapes in the letter a to be a signal of whether the faces will work well together.