Established in 2015, Letterform Archive is a San Francisco nonprofit center for inspiration, education, and community. We preserve over 100,000 artifacts of calligraphy, lettering, typography, and graphic design, and make them radically accessible to the public through exhibitions, publications, hands-on tours, and the Online Archive. We offer a yearlong certificate program in type design, accompanied by public workshops, lectures, and salons on the letter arts, both in-person and online.
Type West is an educational program offered by Letterform Archive consisting of a Postgraduate Certificate Program in Type Design, public workshops in letter arts, and a free lecture series. Learn more at letterformarchive.org
The 2022 In-Person cohort had an amazing, collaborative, and challenging year made possible by a wonderful cast of helpful and knowledgeable humans. We would like to thank everyone involved in making this year possible: our teachers, Archive staff, and the many workshop instructors, guest instructors, lecturers, and critics who shared their time and knowledge with us and who continued to offer their support outside of class time.
We are also grateful that we were able to touch, see and have our minds blown by specimens every Tuesday. It was a real treat for our creativity.
Many thanks also to our families, significant others, and friends—furry and otherwise—who provided us the much-needed support during this adventure.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
Congratulations to the Type West Class of 2022! :’]
Throughout 2022 us students from all over the world sat down in front of our computers to attend classes virtually through Type West Online. Over the course of the year we learned and laughed. We got to collaborate and learn from amazingly talented designers that shared so much with us.
First, thank you to Grendl Löfkvist, Rob Saunders, Stephen Coles, Priscilla Zaccalini, and Letterform Archive for making this program a reality and accessible to all of us all over the world. We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to learn type design from some of the most talented designers and have your support. The Archive has so many resources that we could take advantage of without being physically there and we’re grateful for all of the work you do to make it accessible without being in San Francisco.
Our various workshops about specific topics with Aline Kaori, Zrinka Buljubašić, Katja Schimmel, Rodrigo Saiani, Travis Kochel and Lizy Gershenzon were a fantastic way to break up the week and supplement our learning with special topics. We’re truly lucky to have such talented people take the time to share their skills with us.
Thank you to our phenomenal Type History professors — Ewan Clayton, Briar Levit, and Silas Munro. Their thoughtful and passionate approaches to the subject matter were infectious and critical to our learning. These classes offered so much information and perspective.
Thank you so much to our helpful term TA’s: Sandra García, Jaamal Benjamin, and Miguel Angel Contreras Cruz. And of course, Tamara Segura needs a special shoutout for sticking with us ALL year and being exceptionally helpful. Your constant guidance, support, feedback, critiques and type therapy were instrumental to keeping us on track each term. We couldn’t have done it without your critical eyes.
Carl Crossgrove, Lynne Yun, and Gen Ramírez, thank you each for your time and energy — teaching us the fundamentals of type. We learned so much from each of you from your thoughtful presentations, critiques, office hours, and 1-on-1s.
Finally, Juan Villanueva. How do we even begin to thank you? You spent so much time with us as a class and also individually answering our constant, repetitive questions. You gave us insightful presentations and critical critiques. You drew fun characters on our proofs and made sure we had the tools and information to make us successful. You reeled us in when we needed it but kept the material fun and kept our passion for type ignited.
The students of Type West 2022 Online would like to thank our TAs and visitors for their support and sharing their knowledge: