Re-envisioning Typography Education and Representation

HOW IT STARTED:

Fall 2020: A group of 6 females. Responding to under-representation in typographic scholarship. Determined to be the difference they want to see in typography. All locked in Zoom class by a pandemic. Decide to travel. Simultaneously online and off-grid. Following in the footsteps of the paragon Louise Fili, but on a path less traveled. To Puerto Rico and Ireland, Germany and Colombia, the US Virgin Islands and New Zealand. To collect and study and represent the typography of these places. To bring the world’s typography to the world.

The Wander Type Project was born as the research of an undergraduate typography class at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Under the instruction of Dr. Miriam Ahmed, they threw out the textbook in order to study understudied type. The students attended class fully online and, trapped behind their computers in this golden age of global connectedness, decided to go further than they could in person. They strolled scrolled through the streets of cities that are underrepresented within typography analyzing signage, collecting hand-drawn, hand-made type, assembling specimens of global typographic expertise and character and culture. These students have studied original type in more remote places than many, and all while remote learning.

These students are authors. They are allies. Their books are an offering to the world of typography and an exhibition of inclusion of the world in typography.

HOW IT’S GOING:

New cohorts of students have now completed Wander Type Project research under Dr. Ahmed’s instruction and mentorship, and continue to build this repository of underrepresented typographic scholarship.

Nicholas Waguespack (Fall 2021 cohort) published his book on Amazon and presented his research at the 2023 ATypI conference in Paris.

The fall 2024 students at George Mason University Korea took the project in a different direction finding unintentional type specimens within scenes across a collection of videogames, and one student found specimens within historic artworks that were looted or stolen. These unconventional approaches to the research add intriguing dimension to the Wander Type Project and the study of underrepresented typography.

COPYRIGHT

The individual researchers own the copyright to their works. References to these works must be cited crediting the researchers and the Wander Type Project. This archive is made freely accessible to all by the researchers. The data archive and project are managed by Dr. Miriam Ahmed.

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The Books

The Fall 2020 cohort presented this research at ATypI 2020 All Over and their final deliverables are volumes published here and connected under the title “Wander Type” (thanks to ATypI audience members and especially Hrant Papazian for suggestions!)