Artist Residency Programs

Type gives form to language and elevates meaning. From the largest corporation to the smallest nonprofit, successful brands harness this power. The Building Brands With Type residency offers design professionals a concentrated study in typography and branding through the lens of type design. Participants will design a typeface attached to a specific brand of their choice. The residency gathers some of the industry's most talented type-brainiacs to teach letter-based critical thinking. Guest lecturers, workshops, and field trips further enhance the depth and breadth of this immersive experience. Mastering typography gives designers access to design's most powerful tool. New technologies provide the opportunity to employ type's expressive capability to shape content and amplify meaning. Participants will increase their typographic competence through the study of letterforms, type history, custom lettering and type design, and then explore this new knowledge through an applied brand identity project that centers on type's impact. Participants will take away an expanded comprehension of type's meaning, functionality, legibility and flexibility, and an amplified perspective of the typographic landscape-past, present and future. Design residency faculty have included Yomar Augusto, Matteo Bologna, Chris Caldwell, Tobias Frere-Jones, Cyrus Highsmith, Jessica Hische, Charles Nix, Stephen Nixon, Marie Otsuka, Daniel Rhatigan, Victoria Rushton, Ksenya Samarskaya, Paul Shaw, Elizabeth Carey Smith and Lynne Yun. Guest lecturers and critics have included Gail Anderson, Matthew Carter, Nadine Chahine, Claudia de Almeida, Louise Fili, Steven Heller, Mitch Paone, Daniel Pelavin, Jeff Rogers, Astrid Stavro, Christian Schwartz and Nick Sherman. Program coordinator: Joe Newton. This residency is intended for experienced graphic designers, type teachers, recent design school grads and typophiles wishing to learn more about creating and using type in graphic design for all media.
This course is graded on a pass/fail system. A portfolio is required for review and acceptance to this program. A solid knowledge of vector-based drawing (e.g., in Adobe Illustrator) is highly recommended. All participants with an active registration in this residency will be given free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud and receive a 30-day trial version of the Glyphs type design app (with the opportunity to buy a full version at 50% off).