As a design researcher and a design educator, I have asked a question: How do we combine digital and physical materials to enable a new typographic experience? I had the opportunity to bring innovative learning experiences into a typography course in response to the emerging digital technologies. The course provides opportunities to prove how to transfer design principles into new typographic experience within multi-dimensional space and how to materialize their ideas with digital fabrication technologies. Since the invention of printing technologies, graphic designers have spent hundreds of years developing impeccably proportioned, beautiful typefaces on flat and static space and print technologies to support the perfection of printed materials. However, typography has evolved with the creative process, shifting the emphasis from two-dimensions to multi-dimensions. Under the development of digital technology, the exciting and rapidly changing digital environment has influenced typography and typographic experiences. Technological advancement and new manufacturing processes using Computer Numerical Controls like 3D printing, CNC milling, and laser cutting have broadened creative possibilities and the perception of crafts. They have become more refined, common, and accessible. Also, these new technologies have tested to push the boundaries of the medium both regarding concept and materiality.
Multi-dimensional typography education with digital fabrication
