Type@Cooper

Type@Cooper
Name	Type@Cooper
Formation	1992
Type	Independent type foundry and educational program
Headquarters	Cooper Union, New York City

Type@Cooper is an independent type foundry and intensive type design program based at Cooper Union in New York City. Founded in the early 1990s, it operates at the intersection of practical type production and academic study, attracting practitioners from across United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, China, Australia, and New Zealand. The program emphasizes hands-on instruction, historical literacy, and digital font engineering, serving as a nexus for designers connected with institutions such as Royal College of Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Columbia University, and Pratt Institute.

History

Type@Cooper traces its origins to initiatives at Cooper Union during the late 20th century when students and faculty sought dedicated instruction in type design alongside programs at Rochester Institute of Technology, KABK, University of Reading, and The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Early collaborators included practitioners affiliated with Monotype Imaging, Linotype, Adobe Systems, URW++, House Industries, and Emigre. Over the years the program expanded via partnerships with type foundries and cultural organizations such as Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Hewitt, New York Public Library, Type Directors Club, and AIGA. Directors and visiting tutors often had ties to historical figures and institutions including Herb Lubalin, Matthew Carter, Stanley Morison, Eric Gill, Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger, and Bodoni-related scholarship, situating the program within a lineage of European and American typographic practice.

Programs and Workshops

The curriculum offers seasonal and annual intensives, weekend workshops, and remote courses that mirror offerings from Type Media, Cooper Type Workshops, ATypI, TDC Annual, and summer programs at Reading University. Topics range from glyph construction and spacing to OpenType features, variable fonts, and hinting workflows using tools associated with FontLab, GlyphsApp, RoboFont, FontForge, and Python scripting practices originating in MIT labs. Visiting tutors have included figures connected to Pentagram, IDEO, Frog Design, Sagmeister & Walsh, Chermayeff & Geismar, and independent studios tied to New Balance and Apple Inc. client work. The program’s pedagogical model interoperates with grant-supported initiatives from National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and cultural residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, linking students with publication opportunities in outlets like Communication Arts, Eye Magazine, Print Magazine, and Typographica.

Notable Faculty and Alumni

Faculty and visiting lecturers have included designers and engineers with professional histories at Adobe, Monotype, Linotype GmbH, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist, Bloomberg, Pentagram, Sagmeister, Hoefler&Co, Commercial Type, Dalton Maag, Fontsmith, and ParaType. Alumni have gone on to found independent foundries and studios engaged with clients such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, IBM, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, and cultural institutions like Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum, British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Smithsonian Institution. Graduates appear among juries and committees for awards like the Type Directors Club Medal, TDC Typeface Design Competition, soTA Typography Competition, Prix Charles Peignot, and exhibitions at Cooper Hewitt and MoMA.

Typeface Releases and Publications

Typeface projects emerging from the program have been published through independent foundries and distributors connected to MyFonts, Fonts.com, Fontspring, Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, Font Bureau, Hoefler&Co, Commercial Type, and Village. Releases span text faces, display families, variable fonts, and revivals inspired by sources in the collections of New York Public Library, Grolier Club, British Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and private archives linked to William Caslon and John Baskerville. Scholarship and exhibition catalogs produced by program participants have appeared in venues and bibliographies associated with RIBA, ICA, V&A, Sotheby's, and academic presses tied to Princeton University Press, Yale University Press, and Routledge.

Collaborations and Partnerships

Type@Cooper maintains collaborations with academic departments and commercial partners including Cooper Union School of Art, School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, The New School, and tech partners like Adobe Systems, Google, Monotype Imaging, Microsoft Typography, and Apple Typography. It engages in projects with museums and archives such as Cooper Hewitt, MoMA, Museum of Typography (Tbilisi), Bibliothèque nationale de France, and publishers including Penguin Random House, Faber & Faber, HarperCollins, and independent presses linked to Jeffrey Augen and Nicholas Shanks.

Facilities and Campus Integration

Situated within the historic campus of Cooper Union in Greenwich Village, the program leverages computing labs, letterpress workshops, and print studios that interface with resources at New York Public Library, Center for Book Arts, International Typeface Corporation archives, and the special collections of Cooper Hewitt. Facilities include access to letterpress equipment used by studios connected to Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum and digital fabrication tools common to makerspaces at NYU Makerspace and Brooklyn Grange-adjacent workshops.

Influence and Reception

The program’s graduates and type releases have influenced editorial design at publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Time Magazine, Wired, Vanity Fair, and corporate identity work for brands like Google, IBM, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft. Criticism and appraisal have appeared in periodicals and conferences organized by ATypI, Type Directors Club, Eye Magazine, Design Observer, and academic symposia at Cooper Union and Columbia University, situating the program within contemporary debates on legibility, multilingual typography, and digital font distribution.

Category:Type foundries Category:Cooper Union