Typography in Education Questionnaire

Who -that matters- will be listening?

hhp

I should have said (h)rants are expected and welcome ;)

Hopefully quite a few people who care - and matter - will be listening. These panelists are typographic and design educators from diverse regions in North America. There are a number of other educators speaking at TypeCon2003. The registration database shows that more teachers will be in attendance, and even better, they're bringing students.

There are any number of ways to disseminate information to reach a broader group of educators. This panel is a beginning. Ideas for expanded outreach are very welcome.

Well then, I'll keep my fingers crossed!

I'm just wary of preaching to the choir, which is only useful if you need practice preaching.

hhp

I hear you! But it's really quite cool about the audience. They're not all members of the choir, per se - there's been a healthy response from non-"industry" people this year. Spreading the good word, one day at a time...

One good thing I can say about the design program at Maine College of Art, was it's focus on typography. My instructor for typography was Mark Jamra, designer of Kinesis. Sadly though, he was the only instructor who strongly emphasized typography.

Kinesis-MM is the single best design in the entire Adobe library- no exceptions. And I was lucky to have the opportunity to express exactly that to Mark during ATypI-Rome.

hhp

Consider not only university art courses, but also any introduction to computers or keyboarding in high school or university. If a week or two in these were done on typography, using a book such as 'Looking Good in Print,' it would make a world of difference in the awareness of good graphic design.

I agree with William Berkson, regarding the need for better instruction in high school.

This is where bad habits are created. It is imperative for students to have a high school design education in high school, rather than a "design" education.

Never mind high school.
Start at the begining.

Typography should be taught as part of DTP to all children who are learning to "write". Now that everyone with a computer is a typographer, it's a life skill.

Keyboarding has supplanted writing in many areas. I can never approach the beauty of my grandmother's handwriting (she was learning in the first decade of the 20th century) - and all her peers were just as skilled! That skill of beautiful writing, once so commonplace, is gone, but a goal to replace it would be beautiful typoography.

I totally agree with Nick... Typography (or desktop publishing) should have replaced 'typing' or 'word-processing' by now. But it's amazing how many general users of computers still don't know there's anything beyond typing. English teachers should also be more involved in this, since it has everything to do with language and literature. When I was at high school, we did have one class of DTP in English though. We had to 'type out' our newspaper article and then flow the text into a frame in a DTP program. I was quite amazed at that time and but didn't fully understand what was going on :-P Actually, I started doing DTP without even realizing it: I used PowerPoint to 'word-process' because I wanted to be able to put text where ever I wanted.

Rant on: Several years ago I found myself in the lobby of the School of the Art Institute here in Chicago, when I noticed that the eight-inch-high overhead signage type near the ceiling, in all caps, had reversed A's and V's, possibly U's (GALLERY, ADMINISTRATION, etc.). I think that such a thing is outrageous in an institution, no less a room, through which daily walk dozens of professors and hundreds of students of typography. I wrote them about it, but I wonder if it was ever fixed. Rant off.

QUESTION: In general terms, what sizes of a standard font (eg Times New Roman) should be used for different grade levels for schoolchildren? Eg, 14pt for 4th grade and below?