Events
Python for Visual Designers
with Maurice Meilleur
Expand your type and design practice by learning the basics of personalized creative coding.
- Date
- Time
Some of the best visual ideas come from setting up a system with variables and boundaries—a color palette, a handful of typefaces, a grid, a set of shapes or letterform components, and some rules for how they can be configured—and then exploring all the outputs the system can produce. Designers often don’t consider how the software tools we use can encourage us towards certain procedures and solutions, and away from others. Learning to create our own tools can lead us to new and unexpected ways of working.
Coding is a great tool for creating and exploring systems: computers love repetition, and they can quickly make hundreds of variations on a theme. Even mistakes in the code can result in something that looks more interesting than what you originally intended. And sometimes you want to quickly generate options and variations in a system you understand already: to make a set of type specimens, for example; or to test multiple combinations of type size, line length, linespacing, and margins in a print or page page layout.
Participants in this workshop will learn the basics of computational design and creative computing in the Python programming language, working in DrawBot, a free application for MacOS. You’ll learn how to save the outputs of your sketches in DrawBot as raster or vector files, as finished output or to edit further in Photoshop or Illustrator.
With a little more work in the code editor, you will produce entire print projects and export them as .pdf documents. And you’ll learn how to save a series of canvases as an .mp4 movie or animated .gif. Along the way you’ll be writing code that you can read, understand, edit, and revise yourself (unlike the code that Claude or Codex will serve you!).
You should be comfortable doing some very basic math—remember: you can get the computer to do it for you!—and be familiar with OpenType and variable fonts. But you won’t need any prior coding knowledge for the workshop.
Learning Outcomes
- An introduction to:
- Python programming language
- Basic coding techniques like defining variables, step-and-repeat iteration, logical tests, and object-based programming
- Setting type and selecting OpenType and variable font features with code
- Visual pattern analysis and reconstruction/variation
- Gaining familiarity with the DrawBot coding environment and library
Required Materials
- A Mac running OS 10.12 (Monterey) or later
- A fast enough internet connection for video calls (the Zoom desktop app is recommended)
- Some introductory knowledge of Python is useful and welcome, but absolutely not required
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.
Maurice Meilleur
Maurice Meilleur is a recovering political theorist turned graphic designer and design researcher and writer. He studies constructed scripts and pattern-making as parts of a larger exploration of typographic representation and algorithmically-defined formal systems. His book on the methods and principles of constructed scripts, What can be letters, what letters can be, will be published with Itemzero in the fall of 2026. He’s also been investigating the archives and cataloging the script designs of the postwar Dutch designer Jurriaan Schrofer, and reconstructing Schrofer’s designs as digital fonts.
Maurice is presently an assistant professor of graphic design at Iowa State University, where he teaches typography, design ethics and theory, and (occasionally) computational design. He also teaches basic creative coding workshops (like this one!) with Python and DrawBot. He’s presented his work and research for Robothon, ATypI, TypeCon, the Cooper Union’s Lubalin lecture series, the Letterform Archive, Letterspace Amsterdam, AIGA, and Automatic. He’s also contributed book and type reviews to Typographica and Fonts in Use. When Maurice isn’t working, he’s usually reading, running, or trying to become a better photographer.
