Summer University to Bangkok with first year ECAL Master Type Design students.
As part of the Summer University, first-year students from the ECAL Master Type Design travelled to Bangkok for a week of encounters, workshops, studio visits and explorations of the city’s rich typographic landscape.
The programme began with a series of Type Walks led by Santi, where students explored Bangkok through its signs, lettering and everyday typographic environments. We also met with students from the Communication Design programme at Chulalongkorn University for a conference and exchange around type and graphic design practices. Visits to the studios of Cadson Demak and Studio 150 offered insights into contemporary Thai type design and the different ways in which local cultural and linguistic contexts shape design practices.
The trip continued with two hands-on workshops. Together with Boom, students experimented with Thai lettering, exploring the particular structures and expressive possibilities of the script. At RRU, Jinsilp introduced the group to Thai calligraphy, providing an opportunity to approach the script through gesture, rhythm and the physicality of writing.
The week offered students the chance to encounter Thai typography both in the classroom and studio, and in the streets of Bangkok itself—connecting research, making and exchange with a new cultural and linguistic context. Thank you to Santi, Boom, Cadson Demak, Studio 150, Jinsilp and the students and teachers at Chulalongkorn University for welcoming us so warmly and sharing your knowledge with us.
MA TYPE DESIGN
with Eddy Bennett
In this analogue workshop, students merged the ornate lettering styles of the late 19th century and the meticulous craft of reverse glass painting and gilding with their personal perspectives on type design. Thanks to Gold Leaf Supplies for supporting us with material!
MA TYPE DESIGN
by Chandra Sperle
How we perceive and interpret the world is influenced by scale—by the distance, size, and the spatial relationship between observer and object. This project explores how scale influences meaning and perception through an experimental dialogue of type design, photography, and visual art. At its core is Gradual, a typeface that remixes Ladislas Mandel’s Galfra and Adrian Frutiger’s Roissy, reversing their original scale of habitat. In collaboration with artist Pai Litzenberger and the design duo Scinema (Leidy Karina Gómez Montoya and Tonda Budszus), the project expands the typographic concept of optical sizes from nano to macro dimensions. Together, Gradual offer a multi-layered reflection on our spatial interactions with the world.
MA TYPE DESIGN
by Giulia Zanzarella
How long does a Minut last? Time is standardized, but its experience follows no rules, being mathematically equal for all, but felt differently by each. Minut explores this gap: a play on words between “minute” and “unit,” it is a type family built around four styles defined by width constraints—72 units (proportional), 9, 3, and 1 (monospace). Each style reflects a degree of mechanization, inspired by unit systems used in proportional spacing typewriters. Celebrating the beauty of constraint, the characters of Minut find their own rhythm, generating textures with subtle variations. Rather than being interpolated, each style of Minut is drawn individually, prioritizing the overall texture of each font—going against the limitless flexibility of digital design.
MA TYPE DESIGN
by Jamie Michiki
Dutyfree is a bi-script sans-serif typeface that supports both the Latin alphabet and Japanese scripts. It includes eight weights and covers the full range of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji characters. Designed to harmonize the atmosphere of both writing systems through shared skeletal structure, detail, and contextual nuance, Dutyfree bridges two distinct typographic origins: the Latin typeface Venus and the Japanese Ishi Chu-Futo Gothic. With a theme of overlap and crossover between writing systems and design cultures, the project was developed under the concept of "logistics graphics." Beyond just a typeface, Dutyfree also includes symbols and signage elements designed for use in logistics and packaging contexts.
MA TYPE DESIGN
by Jonathan Bruun
Sekvens is a typeface family of five weights with corresponding italics shaped by a continuous dialogue between perceptions of time and the design of letterforms. Revisiting early digital aesthetics and humanist sans serifs, Sekvens balances a standardized structure with subtle, idiosyncratic details. It navigates the familiar, embracing defaults, norms, and conventions, while simultaneously questioning how the inherited connotations of these forms are aging within the current landscape of type design. Embracing this duality, Sekvens represents both a documentation of past tendencies and a search for new proposals.