Type@Cooper Advanced Type Design: Open Studio is a live online workshop for people who already design typefaces, taught by Petr van Blokland for Type@Cooper at The Cooper Union. Across ten Tuesday sessions, from 16 February to 20 April 2027, 5:00 to 7:30 pm Eastern Time on Zoom, it covers the professional production side of type design, through short projects that build to a working variable font. The fee is $975 and the class is limited to 14 students.

Most type design courses concentrate on drawing letters. This one concentrates on everything that turns good drawings into a dependable font family: interpolation, design spaces, spacing and kerning, OpenType features, scripting, automation and quality assurance. It also covers version control with GitHub and discusses where AI prompting, sometimes called "vibe coding", helps and where it falls short. That production focus is what distinguishes it within the Type@Cooper programme.

What You Will Learn

The workshop covers the tools and methods of professional type production. Topics include:

Drawing tools, and the difference between Bézier and quadratic curves
Interpolation and design spaces for type families
Spacing and kerning
OpenType features
Proofing and quality assurance
Planning a type design project
Scripting and automating repetitive tasks
Version control with GitHub
The limits of AI prompting and "vibe coding" in type production

Who Is Type@Cooper Advanced Type Design For?

The workshop is designed for people who already design typefaces. It suits graduates of type design programmes, self-taught type designers who want a more systematic production process, and designers whose fonts look good but become unreliable when expanded into larger families or variable fonts.

It is not a starting point. If you have never drawn and spaced a typeface, take an introductory course first, such as Type@Cooper's Principles of Typeface Design: Display Type, also listed on Good Stuff Weekly. People who cannot attend live sessions in Eastern Time evenings may also struggle, since the class is taught live.

Schedule

The Type@Cooper Advanced Type Design workshop meets on Tuesdays, 5:00 to 7:30 pm ET:

Start: Tuesday 16 February 2027
End: Tuesday 20 April 2027
Sessions: ten live sessions on Zoom
Projects: a series of short projects leading to a working variable font
Between sessions: about an hour a day of work is suggested

Price and Access

The workshop costs $975. It is limited to 14 students, so places are scarce and worth booking early. Free educational licences for RoboFont, Glyphs and/or Fontra can be arranged for participants, which removes the cost of a font editor for the duration of the workshop.

About the Instructor

Petr van Blokland, born in 1956, graduated cum laude from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and has run a studio with Claudia Mens since 1980. He has taught at Arnhem, at TypeMedia (KABK) and at St. Joost in Breda, co-founded WebType and Type Network, and designed the typefaces Proforma, Productus and Presti. He received the ATypI Charles Peignot Prize in 1988.

Things to Consider

Experience: you should already be designing typefaces; this is an advanced class.
Time: plan on about an hour a day between sessions, on top of the weekly class.
Computer: you need a Mac running macOS 10.12 or later.
Software: ask about the free educational licences for RoboFont, Glyphs or Fontra.
Bring curiosity about code: scripting, automation and GitHub are part of the syllabus, so be ready to work beyond the drawing tools.
Time zone: sessions run 5:00 to 7:30 pm Eastern Time; check how that fits your evenings.

Register for the Workshop

Interested in learning with Type@Cooper?

For the full syllabus and registration, visit the official Type@Cooper website.

Looking for more ways to learn? Browse all courses and learning resources on Good Stuff Weekly.

Last verified: November 12, 2026

Advanced Type Design: Open Studio at Type@Cooper