The ABC's of Expressive Type

By Donovan “Donny Bloggernaut” Brien
Being a student, one of the hardest things to concentrate on is making typography itself expressive. Graphic design, after all, is a layered and complex artform, and its very easy for students to forget about their type in the process of design. Knowing Alphabet Arm’s passion for typography and exceptional talent for making type expressive, I invited the team to come down and give a workshop at Boston University for the BU AIGA student group, which they happily agreed to do.
The workshop specifically concentrated on weathered type treatment both on the computer and by hand. The students were asked to create a composition based on their initials using a pool of resources provided for them. They were then taught various ways to use the type expressively and methods of achieving an archival and weathered feel to their type.
As the students worked, Aaron, Ryan, Ira, and Chris helped the students with technical issues, design choices, and suggested methods to help them achieve successful designs.
Overall, it was hugely successful and was extremely well received by the students. Check out some photos from the workshop below.
workshop_pictures