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.

Ambi

Ambi is an editorial font collection that currently consists of an abstract brush style and a more practical sans. The collection structure is inspired by the multi-typeface typography of individual Vietnamese-American/Vietnamese restaurant menus and food packaging, such as Huy Fong’s Sriracha bottle. The project comes from asking: How is vernacular visual culture treated in type design? What does the conventional family structure culturally reflect? How is typography affected by presenting seemingly unrelated fonts together in a collection, and what does that typography say?

Vanna Vu

Vanna is a Vietnamese American designer living in Minneapolis.

Website

photograph by Sophia Wilson for archivechives

flyers by V.E. Chen (using an additional font)