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
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Syllabus:
01 Description
02 Learning Outcomes
03 Assignments
04 How We Work
05 Studio Culture
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04
Design Sings! Part 1: Composition
Design Sings! Part 2: Pattern
Design Sings! Part 3: Cover
Acrobats, Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1964. From The Blue and the Brown Poems (New York, 1968). 2016.PR.36. By courtesy of the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay
OVERVIEW
In this assignment, you will explore the expressive potential of typography by using it as the primary visual and communicative tool. Working from a chosen song or poem, you will move along a spectrum from structured and constrained typesetting to fully expressive, abstract typographic composition — discovering how letterforms, spacing, scale, weight, and rhythm can carry emotion, meaning, and narrative without the aid of image or color.
DELIVERABLES
- Three 11 × 17 compositions (Version 01, 02, and 03) — print-ready PDFs and printed copies
- Your associations and connotations list from Part 2
- Writing (one paragraph, printed out—the purpose of this is to summarize part 1 for Mary/the class to understand your song/poem)
- Design rationale for each composition (1-3 sentences per poster, printed out)
—why you did what you did
—what your process was like
—what typefaces you used and how you would categorize them
Your writing can be one page, 8.5x11”, Mary wants it printed out so she can refer to it in crit... thanks!
© Professor Mary Banas, Fall 2025School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Universitysmfa.tufts.edu