Thinking With Your Hands In-Person Workshop

Letters can be drawn in so many different ways. Cyrus Highsmith’s approach is based on the importance of white space and sensitivity to shapes. It’s a method he applies to type design as well as image making of all kinds. For Highsmith, it’s a way of seeing the world. This workshop will be a messy, hands-on, and computer-free exploration of drawing, making, and thinking about letters.

Required Materials

• flat brush (.5” or about 13mm) for ink
• empty 4mm bullet tip paint marker or regular black marker
• black ink (Sumi ink is good)
• xacto knife
• sketchbook (recommended size: about 6x9 or A5, blank white pages, if you already have a sketchbook you can use that one)
• empty aluminum can

Supplies That Can Be Shared

• lots of white drawing paper approximately 11x17-18x24, or A3 or A2 size
• dish to use with ink & brush
• newsprint or cheap printer paper for cutting
• masking tape
• sticks (like chop sticks or small pieces of wood)
• cardboard scraps
• sponge or foam to cut up
• craft sticks for making handles
• objects to draw (for example, cooking utensils, scissors, headphones, tape dispenser, teapot, chairs—objects with lots of different kinds shapes in them)

Part of the theme of the workshop is to make/improvise drawing tools so do not worry if you cannot find everything on this list. Everything should be pretty cheap and easy to get.

Letterform Archive has all of these items on hand, as well.

Cyrus Highsmith is a letter drawer, teacher, author, and graphic artist. He teaches type design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He wrote and illustrated the acclaimed primer Inside Paragraphs: Typographic Fundamentals. In 2015, he received the Gerrit Noordzij Prize for extraordinary contributions to the fields of type design, typography, and type education. In 2017, his type foundry, Occupant Fonts, became a brand of Morisawa.