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Blender Typography

with Rob Stenson

Have you ever wanted to build a tower of 3D digital letters, then knock it over? This is the class for you.

  • Date
  • Time
  • What Public Workshop
  • Where Online via Zoom
  • Duration 4 sessions, 3 hours each
This class will focus on building and animating typography in three dimensions using the open-source program Blender and the open-source Blender extension ST2, which brings native high-quality — and cutting-edge — typography to the Blender ecosystem. Blender can be a daunting program to learn, and when you do set out to learn it, most of what you’ll find online has absolutely nothing to do with typography. Which is why this class exists: to lead you on a tour of this powerful 3D program, always with an eye on how it can be used as a tool in your typographic toolchest. From building (and crashing) towers made of glyphs, to taking shallow depth-of-field photographs of Noordzij cubes, to mocking up wayfinding systems in photorealistic architectural environments, we’ll explore the ins and outs of physics, cameras, mirrors, and variable fonts. No knowledge of 3D or Blender or programming is required for this class, though you should know something about typography. Blender runs on all major operating systems, though you will want a recent and/or somewhat powerful computer, as Blender does — for the best experience — require a little computing power to create beautiful photorealistic images.
Sign up before March 17th for a 10% discount!
Diversity and Equity Scholarship
Diversity and Equity are important to all of us at Letterform Archive, and we are committed to increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups within the type and design communities.
We are offering one BIPOC/Equity scholarship seat in this workshop.
To apply for this scholarship, please complete and submit to us the short form linked here at least a week prior to the start of the workshop.

Rob Stenson

Rob Stenson is a designer-musician based in Monrovia, California. After studying architectural history at Columbia University, Rob worked for a time as a programmer in San Francisco before starting Goodhertz, Inc., an audio software company, where he currently works on audio plugin interfaces and a typography programming library called Coldtype. Rob also plays banjo and enjoys looking at buildings.

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