craftingtype.com

What It Is

Crafting Type is a 3-day intensive workshop for beginners in type design. Positioned as a non-profit project, its goal is to make type design more accessible to design students and learners in more regions at a relatively affordable cost. The website clearly states that the project is currently on an “indefinite hiatus,” with no further workshops planned, so it is better understood today as an offline course brand that has paused operations.

Core Curriculum and Teaching Format

The course focuses on type design and an understanding of typography. It emphasizes starting with pencil-and-paper sketches, then moving into a font editor to create and print your own OpenType font. The teaching format is highly hands-on, centered on drawing practice with lectures interspersed throughout. Key topics include letter structure, curve shapes, typeface legibility, and how to judge whether a font family is suitable for a particular typesetting task. No prior type design experience is required. Students typically leave with new tools for drawing letters, a better understanding of typography, and key letters from their own type design project.

Instructors and Learning Support

The workshops are taught by professional type designers. The site lists instructors including Dave, Thomas, Alexei, Eben, Aoife, and Blondina. One of its standout features is the low student-to-instructor ratio, averaging around 10 students per mentor, which helps ensure enough time for one-on-one guidance. The course also provides the necessary software and hundreds of typefaces for research and practice, and covers how to earn money using related skills. However, the page does not mention any formal certificate or accreditation.

Pricing and Value for Money

A typical 3-day workshop costs US$700 for professionals, US$630 for design association members, and US$350 for students, with frequent early-bird discounts of 10% or 15%. Given the small class size, professional instructors, and intensive hands-on format, the pricing is reasonably justifiable for a professional development course. That said, it is still not cheap for casual learners, and since enrollment is currently unavailable, its practical value is limited by availability.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

The strengths of Crafting Type are its clear learning goals, high level of practical work, beginner-friendly structure, and usefulness for designers in fields such as graphic design, web design, UX, branding, illustration, and architecture who want to deepen their judgment and use of type. The downsides are that the project is currently paused, the city-based offline format makes time and location unpredictable, and students need to bring their own laptop and install tools such as FontLab, Glyphs, or FontForge. It is best suited to designers who want to understand the underlying logic of type and improve their typography skills, rather than people simply looking for a quick certificate.

China Access and Alternatives

The site does not provide information about access from mainland China, payment methods, or local registration options, so its access status can only be marked as unknown. Since the official site also notes that online type design resources have become more widely available, alternatives worth following include the Practica Program, Type Electives, Letterform Archive, I Love Typography, and other courses or resources mentioned by Crafting Type.