Days 3 & 4 : The Exhaustionating

Days 3 and 4 have come and gone and with them I have lost all bearings with the regular outside world. The exhaustion has set in slowly over the course of the week culminating with me not remembering what I had for lunch that day and missing steps on staircases and almost falling straight on my face. But the grueling pace has definitely been worth it for all we have seen and learned in such a short time. It feels as if I know everyone so well even though we only met each other this past Monday morning.

super official

Wednesday we visited the Morgan Library for a private viewing with the head curator of printed books to view examples and specimen books of classic type. Handling Bodoni’s Manuale Tipigrafico as well as 1 of an edition of 250 compendiums of Didot’s work (hilariously including at the beginning a list of mistakes Bodoni had made and how his work was superior type in every way, early versions of trash talk in action). With the immensely knowledgable curator as well as Sumner Stone giving us commentary on the publications and the type, the type-nerd excitement was palpable in the gorgeous top floor conservation room. Also in view in the main library gallery was a Gutenberg Bible (only 1 of 3 the library has in it’s collection) as well as other extremely rare books.

private exhibition and discussion

That night was a lesson in FontLab spacing issues and how to tackle different difficult letter combinations in most situations. FontLab is slowly growing on me, but it and I still have a long way to go before I’d consider the program a “friend”.

example of one of the viewed texts

Thursday was a full day of altering the weights of our first digitized forms from the Roman tablets and then taking those back to the drawing board. Examining the ways in which we could push the face more formal or informal as well as experimenting with changing the letterforms how we see fit to explore our capabilities took up most of the time with one-on-one time with Sara Soskolne to discuss our progress so far as well as where we want to move towards regarding our final typeface projects (only the first week and already at a point to plan our full typeface direction).

spacing tutorials

I didn’t think I could get much more tired but the latter half of the week has proven me wrong. I am really looking forward to a weekend of sleeping in but I’m also excited to have the time to explore further what I want to work on for my typeface (a quest for inspiration) and hopefully get outside a bit.