Events
Typographic Patterns and Animations with Python and DrawBot
with Maurice Meilleur
For designers who code and love type, pattern, and motion, and want to incorporate them all in their work.
- Date
- Time
In this workshop (on two weekends, December 7-8 and December 14-15) we’ll harness the powerful drawing and typographic capabilities of the free application DrawBot to explore type as form and typographic patternmaking. By analyzing and reconstructing examples of visual poetry and concrete art, we’ll learn important concepts of making patterns with code—including step and repeat, iteration and variation, conditional logic, and randomness—and the basics of looping and phased animation. We’ll also exploit the possibilities of OpenType variable fonts in our creations, and save our work as vector and raster images and motion files. Examples of the artists and designers whose work we’ll look at include: Eugen Gomringer, Armin Hoffman, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Zuzana Licko, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Bridget Riley, Jurriaan Schrofer, Rosemarie Tissi, and Timm Ulrichs. This course is for anyone with a basic knowledge of Python who loves type, patterns, and motion.
Learning Outcomes
- Early intermediate engagement with the Python coding language
- Coding techniques like step and repeat, iteration with variation, conditional logic, and randomness
- Coding and typography
- Familiarity with the OpenType Variable font format
- Familiarity with the DrawBot coding environment and library
- Visual pattern analysis and reconstruction/variation
Required Materials
- A Mac running OS 10.9 (Mavericks) or later
- A fast enough internet connection for video calls
- This class will be held online, so using the Zoom desktop app is recommended
- Participants should have some basic knowledge of the Python coding language; any introductory course or workshop should suffice. Knowledge of DrawBot is useful 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 completed a PhD in political theory from Indiana University Bloomington in 2004, and earned his MFA in graphic design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015. He’s an assistant professor of graphic design at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he teaches and studies typography and generative design. He has contributed numerous type and book reviews to Typographica and Fonts in Use. He’s writing a book on Jurriaan Schrofer’s constructed scripts, and he’s presented his research at Robothon, ATypI, TypeCon, the Cooper Union, and the Letterform Archive. Maurice explores digital drawing and animation using Python and Drawbot as part of a larger investigation into typographic representation and algorithmically-defined formal systems.
