Abstract
We Share Fonts
Type Design with Adobe Illustrator
Type Design is generally regarded as a highly sophisticated design discipline of its own. Formal education offers type design mostly in Master Programs like the MATD - Reading, KABK - The Hague, HGB - Leipzig, ECAL - Lausanne, ELISAVA and UAB - Barcelona, ENSAD - Amiens, DSAA - Paris, UMPRUM - Prague, Plantin Institute of Typography - Antwerp just to mention a view European specialized type design degrees programs on masters level.
Designing Typefaces is rarely already offered in a BA program in visual communication. Therefore many type designers are self-taught Type Designers after the BA degree in graphic design, illustration, or sometimes just career changers and passionate lettering artist.
There is a gap in the formal education of undergraduate levels in Type Design. Interested students and individuals in the expanded field of typography and Type Design gain Type Design knowledge mainly as an autodidact.
The research project «We share fonts» aims to provide new methodologies for more straightforward access to the highly specialised discipline of Type Design. The goal of the project is to provide new tools and methods for Type Design interested Designers, practitioners and BA students.
The research fosters the ground how to design a professional Typefaces or Font with Adobe Illustrator. In the scientific community, Type Design is done with highly specialised software and sophisticated methodologies. Finding new ways in Type Design with the Industry Standard Software Adobe Illustrator will access the Discipline of Type Design to a much wider audience.
In the framework of the research project, «We Share Fonts», between 2016 and 2018 field tests and new teaching methods of type design was carried out in the Foundation Design Course for visual communication WUP-VK. The results of these experiments with the students are published on the website «We Share Fonts».
After the experience gained in 2016 and 2017, within the 1st-semester foundation design course (WUP-VK), the project went in 2018 a new phase. A new teaching method for designing a typeface in Adobe Illustrator® was carried: The «Skeletron Methode».