While it remains possible for the designer to intervene and make adjustments it is easy to assume that the machine knows best. Such sensitivities became internalised and could now be called upon for making fine adjustments when developing designs with a computer. It is probably true that such sensitivities could also be acquired through a series of computer exercises, but with so many demands on the limited time available in a Design course it is difficult to get beyond the first step of learning how to use what someone else has put into a computer programme. I sometimes wonder whether the need to master sophisticated computer software has also put an end to the practice of clay modelling from the nude model which I witnessed at a school of Industrial Design in Sweden which I visited in 1981. It is for other reasons that some hand lettering is still included.
Type rendering is covered at the beginning of the course in typography.
The intention here is that students should gain some understanding of the origins of writing and the forces that have acted on the evolution of letter forms. Special emphasis is placed on the relationship between writing surfaces, writing tools and their manipulation and the influence that all these have on the appearance of letter forms. But it is not enough for a computer to deliver any desired typeface or to duplicate the characteristics of any medium or the techniques of a van Gogh or a Monet. Monet's techniques are not the same thing as Monet's ideas. It still takes an artist to make art.