Hands On-Again, Off-Again: A Paradigm of Typographic Pedagogy — Silas Munro & David Peacock
Channel: TypeCon
Date: 2022-06-29

Recorded during TypeCon2016: Resound in Seattle, Washington

Despite an expansion of voices in the discourse on educating typographers, there is scant discussion around how the post-digital learning environment has changed the pedagogy of type, and how classrooms have become a hybrid of physical and digital learning space. Case studies of student work from Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Graphic Design program, (one of very few low-residency programs in design), and an aggregation of models in typographic pedagogy (Bayer, Gonzales-Crisp, Lupton, Ruder), together offer a paradigm for 21st-century typography education. The result, “Hands On-Again, Off-Again,” merges the predominantly bifurcated practice of (1) learning based on apprenticeship and (2) learning based on self-study. This “Hands On-Again, Off-Again” approach ultimately is one that is transferable to all typographic learning contexts. While about typography, this fusion of tacit and digital strategies also merges faculty guidance and self-search that is more agile and relevant than the previously mentioned dichotomy of “do-it-yourself” and the handing down of a fixed body of knowledge from “master” to “student.”