Case study: Type Tasting retreat

Type Tasting workshop slideshow

Case study: Type Tasting retreat
By Sarah Hyndman

This is a day-long session away from the computer designed to flex your team’s design thinking abilities as they investigate the user experience of typography, and its role as an essential design tool. This workshop combines a design thinking challenge, with hands-on typographic explorations, lashings of theory, and latest thinking in type perception for your team to take back to their desks.

This is an effective team building session that gives participants the freedom to learn and experiment away from client deadlines, and to fully immerse themselves in the experience. Exercises build on themes and drill down into detail giving your team the opportunity to put ideas into practice. Theory sessions are balanced with creative thinking, hands-on sketching and individual feedback.

Ideal for
Communication industries: designers, non-designers or a combination from different departments and teams. Entrepreneurs, type consumers (no experience needed).

Learning outcomes
Explore typography from the type consumer’s point of view to gain an understanding of the user experience.
Greater awareness of using type to emotionally engage with the audience.
Use design thinking for creative problem solving.
Refresh the team’s sketching skills for creative idea generation.
Confidence experimenting with new typefaces and combinations; instead of resorting to the familiar.
Demystify typography for those without a traditional design education background.
Enjoy a fun and inspiring session that energises the team.

Type Tasting workshop slideshow

The session
Pre-session task.
Choosing a typeface in four steps.
The importance of identifying audience and context.
How the brain reads and interprets different typefaces.
Type history shaped by developments in tools and technology.
Creative typeface explorations with charcoal and sound.
Experiments throughout including perception, cost, personality and typography for all the senses; compare your results with established findings.
Multi sensory type from touch to taste (and why it’s important).
Creative challenge.

Comments
“Brilliant” “Inspirational” “Insightful” “Taught me to think more about the impact of font choice on the consumer”
“A fast paced series of dynamic short briefs with strict time allocations that forced us to think on our feet and trust our instincts”
“A great success; it proved to be both an opportunity to bond as a team and also regenerate out experimental creative natures, which is invaluable for producing engaging and exciting brand expressions”

Read a D&AD workshop case study.

Clients include
Autotrader, BBC, Baillie Gifford, D&AD, Ecole Intuit Lab, Interbrand, JML, Mark-Making, Save the Children, Virgin Active.

Workshop leader
Sarah Hyndman is the founder of Type Tasting and the author of Why Fonts Matter. She is a graphic designer, educator, writer and regular public speaker who is known for her interest in the psychology of typography and is involved in ongoing research with the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford.

Credentials
MA in Typo/Graphics (Distinction) from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts.
Tutor, Experimental Typography, London College of Communication, University of the Arts (2002–2008).
Director of design company With Relish (2003–2013).
D&AD workshop leader, bespoke Typography Lab.
D&AD judge (New Blood and Professional awards).
Author of Why Fonts Matter (Penguin/Random House) and How to Draw Type and Influence People (Laurence King).
Research published with the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford.
Public speaker on typography and perception, including South by Southwest (Austin, Texas), TYPO San Francisco, TEDx, radio and television.
International teaching includes the Ecole Intuit Lab in Mumbai, India.

Watch: TEDx, Master Talk in Mumbai (3 mins), Nicer Tuesdays, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch.

Listen: BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live.

Read: Wired ‘If You Love That Font So Much, Why Don’t You Date It?’, CNN ‘How fonts could help you find the perfect date’, Creative Review ‘A taste of type’, iPerception ‘The Taste of Typeface’.