Type and Media is a master’s course in typeface design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK) . In the first semester students have several modules to complete that are interspersed with a set of enlightening workshops covered by guest lecturers. During the second semester, students focus on their thesis project. This site showcases the final projects of the class of 2020.

A big thank you to the faculty and supervisors at Type and Media for their expertise, wisdom, and support during this especially difficult year: Erik van Blokland, Peter Verheul, Paul van der Laan, Peter Biľak, Françoise Berserik, Frank Grießhammer, Petr van Blokland, Marja van der Burgh, Tânia Raposo, Fred Smeijers, Just van Rossum, Jan Willem Stas, Ilya Ruderman, Aleksandra Samuļenkova, and Kristyan Sarkis, and Mário Feliciano.

This year we had online visits, talks and lectures from friends and colleagues from all over the locked down world. We are grateful and happy that they took the time to join us: Paul Barnes, Ken Barber, Diana Ovezea, Kai Bernau, Nikola Djurek, Liang Hai, Thomas Huot-Marchand and the ANRT students.

Thank you to all the generous people who made our exhibition and this showcase possible:
Jack Curry, Arrow Type, Antonio Cavedoni, OHno Type Company, Ben Kiel, Commercial Type, Andy Clymer, Mark Davies, Christoph Koeberlin, Arthur Reinders Folmer, Matthijs Sluiter, Frank Grießhammer, Liang Hai, Martin Tiefenthaler, Letterspace Amsterdam, Michi Bundscherer, Susana Carvalho and Kai Bernau, Krystian Sarkis, Mathieu Lommen, Dirk Uhlenbrock, Mark De Winne, Erik van Blokland, Albert Pinggera, Paul van del Laan, Nikola Djurek, Rasmus Andersson, Daniel Grumer, Troy Leinster, Lettermin, Noheul Lee and Loris Olivier, Marina Chaccur, Exlijbris FF, Jim Catel, Alexander Kremser.


Website by Nina Botthof, Renan Rosatti & Jan Šindler.

The typeface used is Obviously by OHno Type Company.

Jan Šindler's header

Gabion

Gabion explores the links between headline and text styles. The type family is a result of a very important learning process, a process of unconnectable dots, searching and changing opinions to further enhance the design. In the end, Jan designed a typeface that was initially out of his comfort zone. Now he is looking towards different fields of design to explore with the new experiences that he built upon at Type and Media.

Jan Šindler

Jan Šindler comes from Czechia, where he studied Typography and Typeface design . After having the opportunity to attend TypoLabs and after doing an Internship at LucasFonts he knew that Type and Media was the place for him. Aside type related things, he enjoys exploring new stuff and has an interest in programming. He also likes to play chess, ride and repair bicycles.

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Process

Intro

Coming up with an idea for my final project was an insecure path. I approached it from a few angles but in most cases it was about relating members of the family to each other. I iterated through three main phases, each of them reflected my interest in exploring family planning and links between text and display styles. Each of them had iterations by itself. Looking back I can clearly see how each stage contributed to the final result.

Stage 1

In the beginning I was fascinated by writing tools and their possibilities. I liked how intuition based on previous experience can lead into better and new visual forms. Building this intuition and muscle memory was interesting to me. I tried to write as fast as possible and as precise as possible. Doing each letter was like a race, first you go to check the trail, ride slowly and by each lap you increase the speed and precision in every turn. The idea how tool, speed and other factors can influence the final result was interesting to me. As development on the headline styles was progressing, text styles were slowly getting better in the background.

Tools were not only physical, but coded as well

Stage 2

Graffiti inspired style As I had a satisfactory result in the text I focused on the headline again. This time, my main focus were grafitti inspired letters written in one stroke. I soon discovered that not every letter can be done in only one stroke. This system, that worked for uppercase, was very hard to translate to lowercase. This style was creating a huge contrast to the text size and it didn’t fit at all, but that’s what I wanted, right? I was doubting my headline more and more as I eventually left it.

Stage 3

first sketch of headline, April 23 This one started on April 23rd, when I did a first sketch for the headline and since then I was working on it. 
The text continued to grow and develop in the background, the main focus was again put at the headline style. 
The sharpness and triangular details are a distinctive feature in the text styles, therefore I wanted to underline this in the headline style. It went through some try-outs where they related less or more each time. I think I managed to find a compromise that still allows me to experiment and is related to the text size at the same time. I knew the type is about overall texture and impression. 
But still, how should some details be translated from text into headline?

Conclusion

I have learnt and a lot and I discovered interests and abilities that I didn’t know about. I am happy for this exploration led by our awesome teachers that took good care of us even in unforunate times of COVID-19!

TM20: Jan Šindler from TypeMedia MA on Vimeo .