News
Type for All! Ten Years of Type West
The Archive’s type design certificate program celebrates its tenth year! Over 260 examples of student work will be on display in our main gallery from September 26 to November 15, 2026.
Accompanied by a celebratory publication, Type for All! Ten Years of Type West emphasizes the relationship between Letterform Archive’s collection and the typefaces created by the students in our year-long certificate program. With original work from every cohort since the program’s inception, the exhibition tracks the evolution of a pedagogy balancing historical reverence with contemporary practice and highlights a select showcase of the very best student typefaces.
Type West began in 2016 as Type@Cooper West, an in-person experience in collaboration with New York City’s Cooper Union. When the partners amicably parted ways in 2018, the program became known simply as Type West and added an online cohort in 2021 that now includes students from 31 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe.
Curated by Grendl Löfkvist, Dean of Type West, and Angela Riechers, Education Director at Letterform Archive, Type for All! includes the finished fonts as well as the artifacts of the studio: initial sketches, iterative proofs, and instructor markups guiding a student from a rough idea to a functional type family. We even feature an example of letters cut into stone with hammer and chisel from a weekend workshop offered during the first term.
Learning type design at Type West was a transformative experience that deepened my appreciation for the intricacies of letterforms and taught me to be patient and flexible in my design process.
Estefania Leyva, 2022
It was difficult for the curators to narrow down the choices included in the exhibit and the 64-page book accompanying it. We needed to balance large-format work with smaller pieces, process sketches with finished specimen posters, and examples from both the in-person and online cohorts while doing justice to the incredible variety of styles and formats found in the student output.
A critical consideration was to include the name and typeface of all students awarded a Type West certificate. For a while we were pulling our hair out seeking a solution within physical space constraints and page count. Eventually we hit on the idea of creating a running list of every student name and their typeface name, set in that typeface, to use on the gallery wall greeting visitors as they walk into Letterform Archive, and as the final endpapers (seen above) in the book.
We reached out to over 260 individuals to request their OTF files and rekindled relationships along the way. The process required spreadsheets—so many spreadsheets!—and a great deal of administrative help, but type people are good people; the alumni rallied admirably and soon the emails were pouring in with everything we’d asked for. The project reminded us that part of the Archive’s remit should always be to archive student work, both analog and digital.
Type for All! also uses the student typefaces for wall quotes from a representative from each year, along with quotes from the amazing Type West instructors. We are honored to work with Maria (“Masha”) Doreuli and Sahar Afshar as our current lead instructors, and the rotating group of co-instructors who bring such a wealth of knowledge and experience, along with kindness and humility, to Type West.
I have witnessed so many graduates making meaningful contributions to our world of type in their local communities.
Sahar Afshar, Instructor
In ten instances throughout the show, student work is paired with an item from the collection demonstrating how designers use existing material to inform the creation of a typeface uniquely their own. The Archive values objects for their social and aesthetic significance as well as their historical relevance; disposable examples of vernacular design have a place of pride in the stacks alongside rare centuries-old handbound volumes.
This variety within the collection gives students the freedom to begin sketching from a wide range of reference material. Blending their lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, personal design sensibilities, and the historical material available to them in the Archive’s vast collection, Type West graduates consistently create quirky, beautiful, and (yes!) practical typefaces.
Some fonts honor manufacturing processes. One student, Ryan Molloy, went beyond the digital format, designing his typeface without right angles so the counters could be cut from wood with a router.
There are typefaces that draw upon the groovy vibe of the 1960s and ’70s; such as the multiweight bell-bottomed script by Joshua Michael Diaz (also known as The Type Fella).
Type West trained my eye to evaluate the proportion, rhythm, and spacing of letters with clarity. I learned to approach type design as both a historical discipline and a contemporary practice.
Burçin Canbay, 2025
The diversity of letterforms seen in Type for All! proves that there is always a new and splendid way to reimagine the basic characters of the alphabet—even within established, centuries-old typeface classifications (such as Old Style or Modern) and a variety of writing systems (such as Latin-based, Arabic, Indic, Kanji, Indigenous North American, and more).
As each year of Type West draws to a close, we continue to marvel at the ongoing achievements of the program’s graduates. Eugime Lee (Type West 2025) was named one of the Art Directors Club Young Ones, a student competition, and Joke De Winter (Type West 2023) continued her typographic education at the prestigious Master’s Program at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. Several alumni have opened their own type design studios since completing Type West: Libbie Bischoff (Type West 2023) started Type du Nord, Chris Skillern (Type West 2021) founded Tulsey Type, Joshua Michael Diaz (Type West 2023) launched The Type Fella, and Iván Castro (Type West 2025) licensed his font Ecléctica through Argentina’s Sudtipos foundry. When we spot an alumni typeface “in the wild”—set huge on a billboard, as pages of beautiful text in a book, glowing as film titles on the big screen, or starring in a brand identity—we feel an almost parental flash of pride seeing our little characters all grown up and out on their own.
—Angela Riechers, Education Director