TYPE AS IMAGE: SP 25
Prof. Mary Banas
School of the Museum of Fine Arts at
Tufts University

When contacting me, use my tufts email and copy my personal email for best results:
mary.banas(at)gmail.com

Office Hours: 
Fridays from 12–1pm, on zoom

How to make an appointment: 
https://calendly.com/mary-banas/office-hours
please book this by 9am on Fridays.

Graphic Arts Area Instagram
Permissions doc for GRA IG is here Syllabus
01 Description
02 Learning Outcomes
03 Assignments
04 How We Work
05 Studio Culture
Tufts University Policies
CalendarBriefs
01 Weekly Images02 Alphabet Book
03 Studio Experiments
04 Poster
05 Sequence Readings

Tutorials (including how to print!)

Review Boards: Advice
 Drive
Index

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
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