Type Design
From individual letter forms to word images – an introduction to professional font design. Workshop Type Design at the Institute Digital Communication Environments (IDCE)
Key data
- ECTS points
- 2 ECTS
- Next start
- 21 July 2025
- Duration
- 1 week
- Final application date
- Mon, 23.6.2025
- School days
- 5
- Teaching language
- English
- Place
- Basel
- Price
- CHF 900.– (view fees)
- Studying type
- Fulltime
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Letterforms are captivating. They help create stories and pictures in your mind when you read. Through letterforms, we access and retrieve important information at any time and – through them – experience the world differently. Letterforms can function in an extremely small or an enormously large version. Letterforms help typeset texts and «paint» pictures. In fact, typographic characters show a rich and varied spectrum of forms.
In past centuries, letterforms were a part of major art movements; later, in the 19th century, they became more fashionable and stylish and in the 20th century more systematic! And what is new in this century?
The workshop will explain and show the very character of each letterform in its details. We shall focus on a number of type signs with regard to a concept based on the visual rules of the three basic shapes in Latin type (circle, square, and triangle), the different stroke and curve directions and their terminals. The interaction of drawing by hand and further development on the computer allows for a differentiated and, perhaps, new awareness and appreciation of type forms.

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