typographic systems for changing text

In a junior- and first-year masters-level typography course at NC State University’s College of Design, I instruct students to develop typographic systems for changing text. I ask students to conceptualize and design a typographic system for a publication and test the system using various content. The goal is to consider the needs of the reader when interacting with a text-heavy publication.

The project begins with each student comprising a concept for their publication. They are encouraged to choose something unique enough that it’s not a generic match to publications on the market yet a topic where they can hypothetically source material regularly for a monthly, quarterly, or annually journal. Students collect texts of varying but substantial length.

Early on, I conduct a workshop where students sketch thumbnails for their publication and develop flatplans. Thumbnails allow students to expressively explore contrast and layout on the page in a quick, iterative fashion. Flatplans enable them to gain an overall expectation for the entirety of content they need for their publication - letter from the editor, table of contents, various articles, etc.

Then begins the real fun. Students explore and iterate grids, typographic rules, image to text ratio, and hierarchical relationships. They adjust grid and hierarchies by changing out content to study how the emergent system works and where it needs to adapt to accommodate varying content.

Throughout the process, students gain skills in keeping organized documents, maintaining process work, and establishing rules for the various roles using Master Pages, Paragraph, Character, and Object Styles. The final result is a well-establish, highly refined, and well-crafted physical proof of concept.

Assessing students’ work included analyzing if they were successful in establishing proof of concept and if the information in their publication is presented logically and is comprehensible. Students are expected to learn more technical aspects of publication design including applying roles and rules consistently and effectively to distinguish various parts of text and manage Master Pages, Paragraph, Character, and Object Styles in their InDesign files.

Student Works (top to bottom left to right):
Motherbrain (homepage), Katie Frohbose, 2018
POE, Andrew Hiltz, 2019
WWW. thumbnails, Kratzer, 2019
Dirt masthead iterations, Amy Nailor, 2019
Happy Traveler thumbnails, Brooklyn Longest, 2019
RITUAListic, Randa Hadi, 2018
SUS, Katy Spore, 2019
Weft, Tess Wiegmann, 2019
Not Cottage Cheese, Syashi Gupta, 2019
Input, Christian Townsend, 2019
The Kicks, Michael Zamajcin, 2019
Kiran AR supplement, Karuna Gangwani, 2020