Type West is a type design certificate program hosted by Letterform Archive. Throughout the year, students learned the tools and techniques necessary to create original typefaces, from sketch to font. The students engaged in in-depth, hands-on instruction in type design history, theory and fundamentals. The program is tailored to the needs of recent graduates, working designers, and other professionals who interact with type and typography regularly but would like to deepen their knowledge in a supportive and challenging academic environment.

The Class of 2021 was the first of the program to go 100% online, and the largest class so far with 19 graduating students. Most students logged in from California in the early evening while those across the globe committed to attending in the middle of the night or early morning. Some even managed to move across countries during the course of the program. Reflected is a distinct and varied community of typefaces.

The class would like to thank everyone who was a pillar of support during this past year: family, friends, and everyone who cheered us on in this adventure. We would love to give a special thank you to our teachers, TAs, guest lecturers, guest critics, and workshops instructors. Without every single one of you, our projects would not be what they are. Thank you for sharing what you know:

Grendl Löfkvist, Graham Bradley, Kel Troughton, Lynne Yun, James Edmondson, Libbie Bischoff, Lizzy Ha, Rob Saunders, Gen Ramírez, Juan Villanueva, Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer, Nina Stössinger, Florence Fu, Tommi Sharp, Calder Hansen, Kevin Barrett, Agyei Archer, Miguel Reyes, Jeremy Mickel, Tobias Frere-Jones, Stephen Coles, Gabriel Amijai Benderski Perez, Dina Benbrahim, Sofie Beier, Neebinnaukzhik Southall, Lucille Tenazas, Stefan Ellmer, Sandra García, Dafne Martínez, Mónica Munguía, Iyad Naja, Nicholas Benson, Lisa Huang, Thomas Phinney, Applied Design Works, Bahia Shehab, Haytham Nawar, Lauren Hart, Johnny Avots-Smith, Priscilla Zaccalini, Kate Long, The Archive Staff, & SFPL.

The supporting font is Duplicate Sans by Commercial Type. Special thanks to the makers of Glyphs and Robofont.

Meli

Inspired by my daughter and derived from playful experimentation with the flat brush, Meli (pronounced may-lee) is a slightly unconventional type family for children’s books that consists of three distinct styles intended to be used together: a lively, brushy, pseudo-sans display style, a friendly and more restrained serif text face, and a text italic. In order to create a dynamic and flexible system, I drew the display in such a way that it, like the italic, can also be used within text to add emphasis or character. Meli is a multi-script type family that supports both the Latin alphabet and the Cherokee syllabary.

Chris Skillern

Chris Skillern is a type designer, dad, husband, musician, and casual cartoonist from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has an affinity for lively letterforms, an eye for detail, and a deep appreciation for oat milk. As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Chris has a special interest in working with the Cherokee syllabary. He is currently freelancing and working to launch his type foundry, Tulsey Type, and would love to work with you on any type- or lettering-related projects!

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