Typography is the art of making text and written symbols appealing to a viewer. Before the class, I already possessed some knowledge on the topic due to taking both an Intro to Design and a Graphic Design class, so my educational background helped me some in understanding the lectures. We mostly discussed the history of typography, the evolution of the printing press, and the value of visual information. Most of the world’s communication happens nonverbally, and an easy way to manipulate that is to manipulate text. Different fonts, colors, and supplemental images aid in telling a reader exactly what you mean.
The physical aspect of typography, though, was a bit tougher for me, although no less fun. We had various metal stamps with letters on them, much like the image above (image sourced from ohsobeautifulpaper.com). I first believed that to size the stamps you needed to compare the letters, but I was incorrect in that assumption as lowercase letters do exist. In truth, we needed to measure the height of the stamps in their entirety to make sure the letter size matched. After that, we taped those letters together using masking tape and used an inkpad to stamp our names onto paper.
Overall, the typography assignment went wonderfully, and I learned a lot from this first activity. This might be the activity that sticks in my mind the longest whenever this class ends.
– Ethan Machado, December 3rd, 2025