Typography Project 1: Type Prototype

The story selection is where this project is won or lost. Students who choose a story they know deeply — one with a clear sense of place, time, and tone — arrive at the letterform design with something to work toward. Students who choose a story because it seems visually interesting, or because they have seen the movie recently, arrive with a surface and no direction. I discourage current films and bestsellers for exactly that reason: the visual language already exists, and students borrow it without knowing they are borrowing it. The graph paper requirement is not nostalgic. It forces proportion decisions that software defers. A student who has drawn every letterform by hand on a grid understands the typeface differently than one who has only manipulated it on screen.