And that is a wonderful thing, and the typefaces that talented type designers spend years making should be expensive.īut in the meantime, isn’t design all about working within parameters? How to make something beautiful out of disparate parts? A student who can actually typeset the system version of Baskerville impresses me. Those fonts set themselves, with few exceptions. No one needs to be taught how to use type designed by Tobias Frere-Jones or Christian Schwartz. And so in order to teach them how to know the difference, and how best to spend their money once they have it, they need to work with what they have: system fonts. Students need to be taught that type has value, and good type is expensive.
So starting off by demonizing students who are clueless is short-sighted. The macro issue at hand is that even professional designers and professors of design do not value type. She continued, “Professor _ gave us all a CD of it!” She, like all my students, knew that I do not accept projects using pirated fonts it’s stated clearly in my syllabus, and I assertively read this aloud on Day 1 each semester.
“You have a license for Gotham?” I asked, knowing that the least expensive license runs close to $200-which is not typically the kind of cash students in New York City, or even in the United States, tend to have to spend on school projects. As soon as she handed it to me, I looked at her skeptically. It starts with working with what you’ve got.Ī couple of years ago, one of my graphic design students handed in a project that used the typeface Gotham.