This exhibition celebrates ten years of Type West, emphasizing the relationship between Letterform Archive’s collection and the original typefaces produced by the students. By displaying original typefaces from every cohort since the program’s inception, the show tracks the evolution of a pedagogy that balances historical reverence with contemporary practice, and highlights a curated showcase of the very best student work in posters, specimens, process books, and sketches. Every student who completed the certificate program is represented.
To demonstrate the critical design process, the exhibition includes the artifacts of the studio: initial sketches, iterative proofs, and the instructor markups that guide a student from a rough idea to a functional font. The work on display represents a shift in technical requirements, as a full Latin extended character set is now a standard deliverable for every graduate.
The sheer variety of letterforms proves that there is always a new and splendid way to reimagine the basic characters of the alphabet, even within established, centuries-old typeface classifications (such as Old Style or Modern) and different writing systems (such as Latin-based, Arabic, Indic, Cherokee, and more).