http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/
FontStruct is an online font-buiding tool that lets users quickly and easily create typefaces constructed out of geometrical shapes arranged in a modular grid pattern (like tiles or bricks). The online tool is free, cross-platform, browser independent, and requires no additional software installations.
The collaborative Web 2.0 aspects of FontStruct include a blog, a forum, and the ability to share font constructions with other getting feedback via peer-review and comments, user votes, and ranking of most popular downloads. Tags make font constructions searchable. Font builders are offered Creative Commons licenses to add shared licensing to their creations.
Although this is a simple and modular "lego-style" building tool, there are many typographic studies that can apply in a graphic design classroom. FontStruct offers several suggestions for lessons:
Classic and Historical Typefaces -
Modular Classics
One of the best ways to learn about type design is by looking at samples of work done by masters. We want to select famous modular alphabets – think of Josef Albers’ Kombinationschrift, Wim Crouwel’s New Alphabet or classic bitmap fonts such as Susan Kare’s Chicago – and examine them closely. What are the ideas behind the designs? How were the forms constructed? With which modules, on a grid of how many units? In what kind of real-life projects were those letters used?
Typeface Structures and Patterns -
Modularity in type-design
Type design deals with patterns and repetition of shapes, so it’s natural that there is a lot of modularity in it. A typeface can contain many different types of glyph shapes: different alphabets with upper- and lowercase, numbers, accents, symbols. Each of these groups has its own development history and construction principles. For example, while the typical modulation of latin uppercase characters is based on basic geometric shapes (circle, square and triangle), the typical modulation of lowercase characters is based on more irregular/organic forms produced by the hand. The spacing of a typeface is also generally highly modulated to create a legible and pleasant rhythm for reading.
Each particular style of type – roman or italic, humanist or modern – has its own rules and patterns for standardization and simplification of letter forms.
Legibility and Readability
Other lessons could compare modular monospaced fonts with proportional typefaces for legibility, and to typeset text in various sizes at different line widths and leading combinations to determine optimal readability for each face.
These kinds of lessons could be done with the students' online access being asynchronous outside of the classroom, and tags representing the class can be added to each student's creation so that they are more easily searched and shared within the group.
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