Type as Image
SPRING 2026
Professor Mary Banas
SMFA at Tufts
Email: When contacting me, use both my Tufts email and
my Gmail
Office Hours: Fridays from 12–1pm, on zoom, or by appointment
Make an appointment for office hours:
https://calendar.app.google/fjv8YceUnWXn5AJj8
please book this by 8am on Fridays.
Graphic Arts Area Instagram
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Syllabus:
01 Description
02 Learning Outcomes
03 Assignments
04 How We Work
05 Studio Culture
Tufts University Policies
Calendar
Readings
Tutorials (how to print!)
Review Boards: Advice
Events
Project Briefs:
Submit work:
SYLLABUS
01
What is this course about?
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Barbara Kruger, 2020
Best known for laying aggressively directive slogans over black-and-white photographs that she finds in magazines, Barbara Kruger developed a visual language that was strongly influenced by her early work as a graphic designer. Here, Kruger interrogates the American subject, demanding they examine the conditions of their contemporary capitalist lives, and consider what it is that their flag actually stands for.Jenny Holzer, 2021
Action Causes More Trouble Than Thought (2021), features one of Jenny Holzer's iconic Truisms. The print employs a highly decorative, cursive font which has been rendered in hand-applied palladium leaf onto a screen-printed silver-grey background. At first, the words remain somewhat elusive, merging into an overall elaborate pattern of flowing curls, but once discerned their meaning becomes clear and the simple message is richly communicated. Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins debuts a new body of more than a dozen round paintings made between 2017 and 2019 by the pioneering American artist known for his use of language. The presentation features text Ruscha painted on found drumheads that he has collected over the past forty years. Informed by memories of the distinctive slang he grew up hearing in Oklahoma, the phrases consist of double and triple negatives such as “I Ain’t Telling You No Lie” and “I Never Done Nobody No Harm.” As Ruscha explains, “I grew up with people that spoke this way.…I was very acutely aware of it and amused by it. It seems like you’d run from incorrect English, but I embraced it. I like seeing it and exposing it.”Robert Indiana
From the course catalog:
GRA-0011 is designed as an introductory course for artists from various disciplines who use text in their work. This course investigates typography as an expressive form. How can you create intentional meaning with your type, in addition to what the words say? How does form hold meaning? How might we interpret the meaning we gauge from text arrangements?
This course introduces strategies for creating type as FORM, PATTERN, TEXTURE/SURFACE, and IMAGE.
Slide lectures, references, readings and project assignments will support students working with self-generated expressive text.
We will use the Adobe Suite and analog materials.
We will study vernacular type and the historical development of typographic styles. Students will develop a series of compositions using expressive typography.
The computer will be our primary tool but not the only one. You are encouraged to bring in skills in calligraphy, photography, and drawing. During the course of this class we will use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator as the main software applications. A basic course for all designers and all graphic artists using text.
© Professor Mary Banas, Fall 2025School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Universitysmfa.tufts.edu