This year I had the pleasure of teaching at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The class was called Personal Viewpoints, which is a Junior / Senior class split between three teachers (myself, Katherine Streeter, and Jon Krause this year) each taking a five week section. The students have to actually apply to get into the class, so generally Matt Curtius, the UARTS faculty member (and dear friend of mine) who curated this bunch, picks a good mix of people with different styles but all with excellent work ethics. This was my first real teaching gig (I had a very brief stint at Philadelphia University before moving to New York) and definitely my first time working entirely with illustrators (I went to school for design so didn’t quite know what to expect). Because I only had five weeks with the students, I decided to assign one main project with multiple components — book cover design + endpapers, titlepage, and bookplate for a special edition novelization of The Wizard of Oz. This was literally the first time some of the students had worked with type, so I was expecting to have to do a lot of hand-holding. But, after a very brief lesson, they returned the following week with shockingly amazing type treatments! Seriously, across the board they were great! See for yourself below, and feel free to click on the student’s name to go to their personal site (not everyone has a site link but most do). The students’ names are set in Nelly Script Flourish, a really fun typeface by Tart Workshop. Buy it!
-
My students are awesome.
