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

Studio Experiments



03

Studio Experiments


Week 1: FORM
Week 2: PATTERN
Week: Texture/Surface
Week 4: IMAGE
Overview:

Students will generate formal typographic experiements with a letter, a word, and a phrase exploring the possibilities and limitations of typography and letterforms as form, image, texture + surface, and motif. This is the most important work of the semester as it will inform everything else and is your chance to delve deeply into process and embrace experimental making.

FORM



WEEK 1


Over the next 4 weeks you will continue to practice and expand on your experimental making. The Alphabet Book was an introduction to this idea, but moving forward you will have the opportunity to focus on a new area each week. The focus for our first week is “form”.

Form is: shape, structure, appearance, construction, arrangement. We are going to spend this week looking closely at letterforms from different typefaces.

This week, you will continue your practice from the previous week, but choose any letterform as your subject (or multiple letterforms). You will engage with a project called “Franken-Form” or “Franken-Glyph” by Lucy Hitchcock. For this endeavor, you will familiarize yourself with different type classifications. Then you will choose 4 typefaces from 4 different categories. Using scissors and xacto knives, you will cut the typefaces up, noticing the interesting parts, and create a completely new glyph. What you make may resemble a letterform, but most likely it will not. This is going to be an exercise in looking closer at letterforms, appreciating their nuances and beauty, and creating something completely new.

Readings: 
Thinking with Type
“Concord and Contrast” 
There is no such thing as neutral graphic design (Eye on Design)

PATTERN

WEEK 2
Previously, you created new (franken) FORM from typography and began to train your eye to look closer at typographic letterforms to became more familiar with their beauty and limitations.

This week we are slipping back into abstraction, a little bit. We will be learning about patterns and what makes a successful PATTERN. 

You will practice making all over flat patterns. You will look at a lot of examples and use them as a direct reference for your work. Next class we will tape up your experiments in the classroom (”wallpaper the room”)

IMAGE-TBD

+ TEXTURE/SURFACE


WEEK 3texture + surface linked above
© Professor Mary Banas, Fall 2025School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Universitysmfa.tufts.edu