This site holds selected dissertations and research papers completed within established programmes of study, and resources for students and independent researchers. The texts are both useful as research in their respective subjects, and as examples of research writing in typeface design more generally. The aim is to support research and knowledge sharing within the wider typographic community.
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Size-specific adjustments to type designs
An investigation into the principles guiding the design of optical sizes.
The aesthetic evolution of music notes
Looking at steps in the transition between different printing processes, this paper observes how the shapes of printed notes were modified through these techniques, bearing in mind that the origins of music notes come from handwriting.
Compact Typography. The design of typefaces conceived for small size applications
By considering and establishing the value of compact typography, composite ‘cause and effect’ relationships actuated by multiple factors including size, style and use are considered and reviewed.
Modularity: An elemental approach to type design
how the elemental approach to typeface design through the history of printing has followed a shifting trajectory from calligraphic and manuscript influences to the idea of the letterforms as structures, and thus allowed a shift in the conception of the alphabet, and its construction.
Typefaces for Brazilian indigenous languages
The aim of this dissertation is to make an analysis of the typographic characteristics of Brazilian indigenous languages as they appear on the printed page, with a specific focus on the orthographies
established with the use of the Latin script for these originally unwritten languages.
Letraset: The development of the company, its marketing strategies and the type library
The aim of this dissertation is to analyse how Letraset influenced typography.
The design and spread of Froben’s early Italics
This essay examines the background, design and spread of famed Basel Renaissance printer Johann Froben’s first and especially his second Italic type and thereby makes a small step into a systematic delineation of production, use and trade in type in the early 16th century Basel.
Subordinating italics
An investigation of letterforms during the shift from primary to secondary italics.
