For six weeks I??????ve been studying typography. On occasion, I??????ve produced something halfway to halfway decent as a result of some happy accident or a course of placement and treatment that did not necessarily follow from any typographic prowess.

In the words of own of my more honest classmates, ??????your type sucks.??????

Indeed, it does.

Of all my classes, type is currently the most frustrating, which makes sense as it??????s the greatest challenge I face, given that my actual design skills are weak. Incidentally, it is also the class that I spend the least amount of time, perhaps because it highlights my weakness.

I??????m sharing this because I??????m trying to turn this around. I recognize that I need to spend as much time with type as I do with everything else, perhaps even lose some sleep for typography, or else I will not improve and the whole course will be in vain.

By sharing my lackluster effort, I hope to hold myself accountable to more effort. Picking up some design skills was, after all, one of the motivating factors in applying to design school.

Toward improvement, I read through Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics by Willi Kunz over the weekend to learn more about the basics of typography and then see examples of layouts and using grids. This book was really good for both.

Tonight I spent a couple hours on my type assignment and tried to employ some of the lessons learned from Kunz. The result was still much more bland than I had hoped. Though I??????m still hopeful.

However, I think I need to view more examples and spend more time in front of the screen mucking about.

I will leave you with an exchange, completely out of context, from our last type class.

A: Bell Centennial is a phone book font.
B: Your mom??????s a phone book font.

Oh the kids and their design humor!