简体中文
EnglishWhat Is Type Design Resources?
Updated
Type Design Resources (typedesignresources.com) is a curated link hub for people who want to learn type design or run a type foundry. It gathers beginner guides, books, workshops, courses, software references, community links, and media into one place, organized under headings such as Learning type design, Software, Community, Media, and Character design. It is a directory of pointers to external resources, not a course or tool itself, so its value depends on the quality of the links it collects.
Who it suits
- Complete beginners who want a reading and viewing list before committing to software or a paid course.
- Self-taught designers looking for structured paths (guides, books, video classes) rather than scattered blog posts.
- People moving toward professional practice who need pointers on workshops, courses, and community discussion.
- Not ideal if you want a single structured curriculum with exercises and feedback; the site links out to those, but does not provide them.
What the Learning type design section contains
The page groups learning material into distinct formats, which makes it easy to pick a starting point based on how you learn:
| Format | Examples listed on the page | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Free guides | Design with FontForge (described as a strong introduction regardless of software), Jonathan Hoefler's "Getting started with type design," Glyphs Tutorials (useful beyond Glyphs users), GT Academy Instagram posts on constructing glyphs | Low-cost first steps |
| Video courses | Ohno Essential RoboFont class, Lynne Yun's Type Design School, Charles Nix's Learning Type Design on LinkedIn Learning | Learners who prefer demonstration |
| Article series | Ohno Type School | Short, digestible reading |
| Books | Designing Fonts (Campe & Rausch), Designing Type (Karen Cheng), How to create typefaces (Henestrosa, Meseguer, Scaglione), How to design fonts? (Blaze Type Foundry, 140-page PDF/print-on-demand), Italic (Hendrik Weber), Legibility (Mary Dyson, free online in English and Spanish) | Deep, reference-quality study |
| Workshops | Cyrillicsly (Cyrillic type design), Letterform Archive, Type Design Class (Viktor Baltus), Type@Cooper, Typographische Gesellschaft München | Live feedback and specialization |
| Courses | Plantin Institute expert class, I Love Typography Academy, Knuth-Bigelow Type Design Incubator | Committed, comprehensive study |
The page also notes a practical tip: follow your favorite type conferences, since some run workshops and events through the year.
How to use it without wasting time
- Start with one free guide and one book. For example, read Design with FontForge alongside a borrowed or purchased copy of Designing Type; the guide gives you hands-on steps while the book explains letter construction.
- Pick software before picking tutorials. The Software section exists precisely because tutorials are often tool-specific; the page itself notes that Glyphs tutorials remain useful to non-Glyphs users, which tells you concept-first learning transfers between tools.
- Use the Community and Media sections when you hit a wall. TypeDrawers discussions (including recommended book threads and teachers' reading lists) are the kind of place to ask questions that guides don't answer.
- Treat workshops and courses as a later step. They cost money and often assume basic familiarity; the free material lets you test your interest first.
Limits to keep in mind
- The site is a link collection, so availability, pricing, and depth of each linked resource are set by those external sites, not by Type Design Resources. Check each destination before relying on it.
- Coverage skews toward Latin-script type design, with Cyrillic represented through the Cyrillicsly workshops; other script systems appear mainly through the I Love Typography Academy's course range.
- There is no indication on the page of a paid tier or login requirement for the site itself, but that should not be read as a guarantee; verify on the site if access matters to you.
If your goal is to understand what type design involves before spending money, this site is a reasonable first stop. If you already know you want a structured course with mentorship, go directly to the course providers it lists and compare their formats and schedules.