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Typism Skills Summit 2024

A 2022 post by lettering artist Ian Barnard put me onto the Typism books and by extension, the Typism Community. Based out of the Gold Coast, Australia, Typism is not only a community hub full of inspiration, but resources and skill summits. Subsequently I signed up for their newsletter, and pre-ordered a physical copy of Typism Book 8.

Two years later, as I was finishing up final projects for Lettering Sketchbook*, the 2024 Typism Skills Summit rolled around. It was perfect; I had built up some basic skills during the sketchbook course, and the summit was taking place over a long weekend. At some point between signing up for a free ticket and day 1, I decided to splurge the extra $60USD or so to upgrade to the VIP ticket and get all the extra bonus freebies, brushes, worksheets, and newsletter sign ups.

I sat down on January 26th for Day 2 with a hot cup of tea and some old sketchbooks with blank pages to fill:

It was time to level up.

1. SKILL UP: COMPOSITION

Vinithra Mammen’s talk about ways to create balanced lettering compositions got me started on taking the theory I was picking up throughout the days’ lectures and applying it in practice. She was the last speaker for Day 2 – so afterwards I could mess around with the prompt she gave viewers (“Better Every Day”). It was a good excuse to work outside of my comfort zone, at the time I had done very few lettering pieces digitaly. It turned out well – and to my surprise, even recieved a featured shout out in the Typism blog post (“Celebrating artwork from the Typism Skill Summit“).

Bonus EXP: Digital Lettering (+1)

2. SKILL UP: BOXY LETTERS

Day 3 featured Liz Volpi Impastatio’s creative workshop around Boxy Letters, creating fun and quirky cards for Valentine’s Day. The chunky, big lettering style reminded me of the “carve it out” exercise in Joanna Muñoz’s Lettering Sketchbook course. The examples were bright and fun, and I aimed to carry that across into my practice piece.

Bonus EXP: Digital Lettering (+1)

Because I started a day late, I caught up on Day 1’s lectures after the summit officially ‘ended’. And at the end of the last talk, I made a list of things I wanted to practice from the summit. Practice projects, to reinforce what I’d heard and made notes about.

3. SKILL UP: 3D LETTERING

Nico Ng’s talk touched on ways to simplify 3D Lettering, narrowing it down to three key types – Oblique, Isometric, and Perspective. Of course, that meant to put what he spoke about into practice, I had to do three pieces. One for each type he covered. Though I might have to revisit this again…

EXP: 3D Lettering (+3)
Status ailment: ??? Perspective ???? Math ????

4. SKILL UP: SCRIPT LETTERING

While there were several script lettering speakers at the summit, Thomas Hoyer and Maria Montes’ talks particularly resonated. Hoyer’s talk focused around flourishes, the lines and loops and angles, which paired nicely with the “Principles of Script Lettering” introduction from Montes. I got to pull out a few different pen types and play around in these notebooks, before throwing down pencils for another practice piece to call this skill check-in complete.

Bonus EXP: Loop-y Loop (+1)

5. SKILL UP: TYPE EVOLUTION

Technically Jimbo Bernaus’s workshop exercise only asked for a single evolution stream; a san-serif split into bold and slanted, a serif split into contrasted and condensed. And then the results recombined. But if you read Skill Up 3, you can see where this is going, right? Yeah. The talk was called “Letter evolution: Build letters with confidence“, and this was me. Building confidence. Because if I learnt anything from the 36 Days of Lettering** project, it’s that not all letters (or fonts) are the same.

EXP: Letterform Structure (+1)

7. SKILL UP: BLACKLETTER CALLIGRAPHY

Blackletter calligraphy was another topic that stuck out to me from the three day summit, especially talks from Tamer Goniem demonstrating techniques with colour inks, and Jacqueen Ortiz-Nunog’s dive into Blackletter. Using the supplemental worksheets from Jacq’s bundle goodies, I dived into playing around with the calligraphy brushes I had on hand to go over the drills supplied for stroke control and muscle memory (because, as seen in exhibit 3 and 5, we have form. Worth doing once, worth doing thrice).

With the strokes reinforced, I pulled out my copy of Medieval Calligraphy to reference stroke orders for font samples pulled from the 13th to 15th centuries (“Gothic Textura Quadrata”). These styles were closer in line with Tamer and Jacq’s works than the earlier Unical styles also covered in the book. Following stroke order for the blackletter fonts was oddly familiar, and it took me a while before realising it’s because drawing Kanji characters follows a similar pattern where being drawn (and catalogued) relies heavily on specific strokes.

I still am yet to pull out the nibs and nib holders to mess around with ink for ink’s sake – but playing around with Artline Calligraphy Pens and making other markers confirm to blackletter strokes has proven therapeutic enough as a starting point.

EXP: Traditional Penmanship (+1)

Note: Pages of columns of Blackletter calligraphy are from 2025, recreated in the same style as original exercises from 2024.

8. SKILL UP: DARK LETTERING

Initially just based on the talk’s title I was expecting Noeko’s Dark Lettering to be another variation on blackletter calligraphy, like Tamer and Jacq’s talks. I was quickly proven wrong, and the influence of heavy music in the work she presented piqued my interest even more. How to give letters those darker, sharper shapes and where (or what) to emphasise when it came to specific parts of letterforms.

(I need to visit this again – I may have flown a little too close to the sun here and gone from “dark lettering fun” to “needs to refer to notes to understand what it means”)

Bonus EXP: Circle Math (+1)

9. SKILL UP: VICTORIAN LETTERING

And of course I saved my favourite style for last – Sushimoon’s Victorian Lettering workshop. I was looking forward to this one, having played with more decorative fonts out of old Letraset books and gems like the Vintage Type Graphics book I picked up from the university store many moons ago.

Needless to say I had some fun with these.

EXP: Nostalgia Lettering +1

IN CONCLUSION:

While it took me much longer to get through all the talks than just the three days it ran for, needless to say I got a lot out of the Typism Skills Summit. It pushed me to try new things, or approach skills I already had in a different way. There are definitely pieces that came out of this that I’m still proud of two years later, and no doubt it has gone on to inform my lettering practice since.

Summit Results:
+11 EXP Digital Lettering
+46 EXP Traditional Lettering (Pencil, Pens)

Skill Level Up!
- Composition
- Boxy Letters
- 3D Lettering (Isometric, Oblique, Perspective)
- Script Lettering (Flourishes)
- Font Fusion/Evolution 
- Blackletter Calligraphy (Calligraphy Pen, Key Strokes, Font Styles)
- Victorian Lettering (Ascenders, Descenders)

New Skills Acquired!
- Dark Lettering (Horizontal, Round)

TO FIND OUT MORE…
– Typsim Community: https://www.typismcommunity.com/
– Typism Summit: https://www.typismsummit.com/
– Ian Barnard: Instagram / Linktree / Youtube / Resources
– Vinithra Mam: Instagram / Linktree / Website
– Liz Volpi Impastatio: Instagram / Links / Website
– Nico Ng: Instagram / Website
– Thomas Hoyer: Instagram / Website
– Maria Montes: Instagram / Linktree / Website / Educational Resources
– Jimbo Bernaus: Instagram / Educational Resources
– Tamer Goniem: Instagram / Website / Educational Resources
– Jacqueen Ortiz-Nunog: Instagram / Links / Website
– Noeko: Instagram / Links / Website
– Sushimoon: Instagram / Links / Website

*Lettering Sketchbook – Blog post to come, a Domestika course by Joanna Muñoz. Completed during 2023/24.
**36 Days of Type – Blog post to come. Inspired by the 36 Days of Type a study looking at different lettershapes and forms across capitals and lowercase characters, across a range of typefaces. Completed May-June 2019.

Song lyric references in the above pieces include:
The Freak Show by YUNGBLUD, Deep End by I Prevail, Read Between The Lines by Tom Cardy, Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, Caramelldansen by Caramell, What Does the Fox Say by Ylvis, Deja Vu by Tomorrow x Together, and Merry Go Round by Yui