<commit_before>---
path: "/things-learned-at-typemedia.html"
date: "2018-09-24T10:40:00+02:00"  
<<<<<<< HEAD:src/pages/2018-09-01-things-i-learned-at-typemedia/A-few-things-I-learned-at-TypeMedia.md
title: "Lessons learned at TypeMedia – a general summary, plus tips for current & prospective students"
=======
title: "Lessons learned at TypeMedia"
description: "Things I learned at TypeMedia – a general summary, plus tips for current & prospective students"
>>>>>>> add-opengraph:src/pages/09-01-18-things-i-learned-at-typemedia/A-few-things-I-learned-at-TypeMedia.md
tags: ["typemedia", "design", "type", "hot-tips"]
thumbnail: "./images/DSCF3734.jpg"
publish: true
---

This July, I graduated from [TypeMedia](http://typemedia.org) in the class of 2018. It was one of the most difficult, most rewarding experiences of my life. I'm still too close to it to understand its long-term impact on my design career, but I learned a tremendous amount and got to know a bunch of amazing people. Since the course, I've had an internship in St. Louis, moved back to NYC, and found a contract type design job for the next few months. I've also been working on a mini-website to show and explain my thesis project, Recursive Mono & Sans, which I'll be posting publicly when it's ready. In the coming months, I will also be working on my class's collective website – a TypeMedia tradition which will be exciting to contribute to.

However, before I get too far into all of the next projects, I wanted to record a few thoughts about what I learned in TypeMedia. Hopefully, my experiences can somehow benefit the new and future students in the program.

<img src="./images/2018-07-04-17_51_14.jpg" alt="The graduating class of TypeMedia 2018 along with many of the TypeMedia teachers">

_Above: my very tired class (the end of the year was intense) and most of the core instructors, celebrating the final day of the course_

In this post, I will:

1. Explain what TypeMedia is for those who don't already know
2. Give a few brief tips on getting accepted into the course
3. Describe my two biggest worries before attending, and give my hindsight view of these
4. Summarize the design lessons I learned and document a few of the practices I found useful in getting through the program successfully
5. Offer a few general tips about life, finances, and admin in the Hague

## First off: what is TypeMedia?

TypeMedia is a one-year masters program for type design in the Netherlands, at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. It is a small class of about 10–12 students each year, with near-daily courses and critiques from professors who are some of the best type designers and type technologists alive today. This last bit isn’t an exaggeration. The teachers have made fonts used by huge companies and organizations from the NBA to IBM to the Dutch government to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Several of the teachers have built software or Python libraries that nearly all type designers rely on today, to some degree or another in drawing and generating fonts. The alumni are just as impressive. KABK has a legacy of type education, but TypeMedia officially began in 2004. Since then, alumni have gone on to release typefaces through or work in many of the most important type foundries of today, start their own type foundries, marketplaces, and design studios, and create software widely used by a large portion of the industry today.

<img src="./images/DSCF3734.jpg" alt="My TypeMedia class of 2018">

_Above: my class at the start of the Fall semester (photo taken by <NAME>)_<commit_msg>update yaml<commit_after>---
path: "/things-learned-at-typemedia.html"
date: "2018-09-24T10:40:00+02:00"  
title: "Lessons learned at TypeMedia"
description: "Things I learned at TypeMedia – a general summary, plus tips for current & prospective students"
thumbnail: "./images/DSCF3734.jpg"
tags: ["typemedia", "design", "type", "hot-tips"]
publish: true
---

This July, I graduated from [TypeMedia](http://typemedia.org) in the class of 2018. It was one of the most difficult, most rewarding experiences of my life. I'm still too close to it to understand its long-term impact on my design career, but I learned a tremendous amount and got to know a bunch of amazing people. Since the course, I've had an internship in St. Louis, moved back to NYC, and found a contract type design job for the next few months. I've also been working on a mini-website to show and explain my thesis project, Recursive Mono & Sans, which I'll be posting publicly when it's ready. In the coming months, I will also be working on my class's collective website – a TypeMedia tradition which will be exciting to contribute to.

However, before I get too far into all of the next projects, I wanted to record a few thoughts about what I learned in TypeMedia. Hopefully, my experiences can somehow benefit the new and future students in the program.

<img src="./images/2018-07-04-17_51_14.jpg" alt="The graduating class of TypeMedia 2018 along with many of the TypeMedia teachers">

_Above: my very tired class (the end of the year was intense) and most of the core instructors, celebrating the final day of the course_

In this post, I will:

1. Explain what TypeMedia is for those who don't already know
2. Give a few brief tips on getting accepted into the course
3. Describe my two biggest worries before attending, and give my hindsight view of these
4. Summarize the design lessons I learned and document a few of the practices I found useful in getting through the program successfully
5. Offer a few general tips about life, finances, and admin in the Hague

## First off: what is TypeMedia?

TypeMedia is a one-year masters program for type design in the Netherlands, at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. It is a small class of about 10–12 students each year, with near-daily courses and critiques from professors who are some of the best type designers and type technologists alive today. This last bit isn’t an exaggeration. The teachers have made fonts used by huge companies and organizations from the NBA to IBM to the Dutch government to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Several of the teachers have built software or Python libraries that nearly all type designers rely on today, to some degree or another in drawing and generating fonts. The alumni are just as impressive. KABK has a legacy of type education, but TypeMedia officially began in 2004. Since then, alumni have gone on to release typefaces through or work in many of the most important type foundries of today, start their own type foundries, marketplaces, and design studios, and create software widely used by a large portion of the industry today.

<img src="./images/DSCF3734.jpg" alt="My TypeMedia class of 2018">

_Above: my class at the start of the Fall semester (photo taken by <NAME>)_
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