Thank you to everyone who showed up and participated in our big type tonight weekend in July!

Before we kicked off our monthly event at night, we hosted Rainer Scheichelbauer to lead his workshop “Coding for Non-Coding Type Designers”. Attendees learned Python basics, how to implement python in Glyphs4, and using code to randomize points and abstract letterforms.

Once the workshop was over, our monthly crit presentations began. Gerardo Torres Davila was our first presenter of the night, showcasing his website inkboil.com. Inspired by the beginnings of art and design, Gerardo looks to pens, pencils, and paper to start ideation.

This habit gave him the idea to create inkboil.com, a website that brings doodles to life by applying a customizable jitter effect to drawn lines. Submissions can even be submitted to a “doodle wall” to further connect lone doodlers and to see how others are using the tool.

Next we had Sydney Pennington, our recent Q&A feature, present the start of her process in creating a metamorphosized typeface. It all started when Sydney was given a playlist prompt for turning into a butterfly. When she was designing a cover, no typeface seemed to fit the feeling.

Sydney began looking at forms of chrysalis, leaves, and caterpillars to define and create letterform shapes with.

The room was excitedly giving feedback, with a shocking amount of insect lovers present. Key take-aways were to make the forms more goo-like (possibly hinting to a goo themed variable font). The crowd was also excited and eager to see words being made with the existing sketches to start to inform rules and overall rhythm of the typeface

Our last presenter was our weekend workshop leader, Rainer Scheichelbauer. Using OpenType features, Rainer has created games and combinations of letters that play out almost as animations directly from the keyboard in a basic text editor file. The major feedback from the crowd was simply awe and excitedly waiting for what would be next.

Lastly, the Saturday and Sunday after our Friday crit, we hosted Type Design for Non-Type Designers: Rainer Scheichelbauer & Matteo Bologna the following Saturday and Sunday Aug 1-2. In a single weekend, students learned the full workflow behind designing a typeface on Glyphs from sketch to working font. Throughout the class, Rainer and Matteo walked through creating different font weights, variable typefaces, and browser-based animation, leaving everyone with a solid grasp on type design best practices.

Our next event is this Friday August 28th 7–9 pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY, Tickets are $10 and can be reserved here. Come enjoy the last days of summer by the water and watch some dynamic presentations about leaf inspired letterforms, an inside look at some work from a Type@Cooper student, and how type integrates in fashion and publication design.

Sydney Pennington is a coder and designer born and raised in New York. Her computer science and art history background gives a nuanced perspective on design and the drive to explore design from different mediums and perspectives with consideration of her coding, marketing and art history background. At our event on July 31st, Sydney will be presenting her project Chrysalis Goo Type, a typographic ode to caterpillars undergoing metamorphosis.

TT: Where are you from, what brought you to NYC, and when did you start working with type?
SP: I was born in Brooklyn and raised on Staten Island, so NYC chose me! I just started working with type!

TT: How did you become interested in type?
SP: Through volunteering at the Center for Book Arts and attending the first Type Tonight Event!

TT: What is inspiring you right now?
SP: I’ve been actively trying to collect more art from smaller/local artists! Recently, I got some cool zines from the Brooklyn Art Book Fair, more specifically this blue and purple zine “Diary of a Teenage Black Teenage Robot” with blue metallic pages made by Black Bunny Prints. I love blue and purple type. The poetry and the blue type on purple pages is too good. I also got this really cool Riso Knicks Poster from Bad Student Press, made by Pau Tiu!

TT: What type-related problem are you currently obsessed with?
SP: My current project Chrysalis Goo type! Designing a typeface is new for me but also challenging myself to transfer concepts in my mind like metamorphosis through a typeface.

TT: Describe your design process in one sentence.
SP: Right now I’d say I like to get all my ideas out, throw paint at the wall and then strip it back.

TT: What’s the last thing you learned that genuinely changed how you design?
SP: This isn’t specifically a design lesson but I was listening to the Keke Palmer Podcast episode with Sean Evans and he was describing his expectations for creating great Hot Ones episodes and he said something along the lines of being happy with batting a 7/8 in terms of how perfect an episode is crafted and then said if you get a 10 that’s the icing on the cake. It feels in line with designing “bad” stuff first and making it better later. I just want to internalize creating more without the pressure to make it perfect, because it’s not human to design something that’s perfect or your best project to project. Maybe I’ll change my mind down the line....

TT: When do you know a design is “finished”?
SP: I guess when I get to the point where I feel like I’d wouldn’t make it better if I changed anything.

TT: What advice would you give to beginning type designers?
SP: Ask as many questions as you can - maybe even push yourself to present a project to a group of type professionals?!

TT: What’s your favorite part of making type? Least favorite?
SP: Most Favorite- playing with shapes and forms. Least favorite - I personally worry too much about the final product and that can ruin the process.

TT: Most recently used typeface? What was it for?
SP: I’ve been using Degular mono for a website I’m designing and developing!

TT: What typeface describes you the most?
SP: I don’t think I’ve seen it yet.

TT: What do you hope to gain from presenting?
SP: More type knowledge! Additionally, confidence in sharing my ideas and process.

Hear more from Sydney about her caterpillar inspired type along with 2 more presenters at our monthly meeting event on Friday July 31 7:00pm–9:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY. Tickets available now!

We also still have workshop spots open that weekend. If you’re wanting to dive into type design but don’t know where to start, or want to incorporate code in your type practice, these workshops are for you!

Coding for Non-Coding Type Designers - Friday July 31 10:00am–5:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY
A hands-on intro to Python for fonts: learn the basics of coding, how to think like a coder, and how to utilize A.I. and vibe-code anything you need for your type design workflow. We will start at zero, and learn about variables, loops, flow control, and functions. And eventually, you will know what to ask your favorite LLM to get exactly what you want without wasting too many precious tokens. Some experience with making fonts recommended. Tickets available now.

Type Design for Non-Type Designers - Saturday and Sunday, August 1-2 10:00am–6:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY
In this two-day class, you will learn the basics of designing and generating a variable font with the font-design software Glyphs (Mac only). Go beyond choosing the same typefaces from the type menu to creating your own! No prior knowledge whatsoever necessary. Bring your MacBook with Glyphs installed. Tickets available now.

See you next week.

Coding for Non-Coding Type Designers - Friday July 31 10:00am–5:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY
A hands-on intro to Python for fonts: learn the basics of coding, how to think like a coder, and how to utilize A.I. and vibe-code anything you need for your type design workflow. We will start at zero, and learn about variables, loops, flow control, and functions. And eventually, you will know what to ask your favorite LLM to get exactly what you want without wasting too many precious tokens. Some experience with making fonts recommended. Tickets available now.

Monthly Meeting - Friday July 31 7:00pm–9:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY
Our monthly social event with 3 featured speaker presentations. Tickets available now.

Type Design for Non-Type Designers - Saturday and Sunday, August 1-2 10:00am–6:00pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY
In this two-day class, you will learn the basics of designing and generating a variable font with the font-design software Glyphs (Mac only). Go beyond choosing the same typefaces from the type menu to creating your own!

On the first day, we will learn the basics of drawing a font, generate the font, and use it in an Adobe app or a web browser. In the afternoon, we will add additional letters to the font, learning how to space them, add diacritics and punctuation.

On the second day, we will add more letters, design a bold version of the same typeface, create a variable font—and make it animate in a web browser. At the end of the class, you will probably not have a finished font, but a respectable start and a deep understanding about how fonts are made. And maybe you’ll become a type design addict. You have been warned.

No prior knowledge whatsoever necessary. Bring your MacBook with Glyphs installed. Tickets available now.

Postcard typography, open source typefaces, and glitch influenced letterforms.

Just a few things we’ll be looking at tomorrow night. Wednesday June 24th 7–9 pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY, right in the middle of Typographics festival week. Tickets are $10 and can be reserved here. Come start off the festival circuit with us in South Street Seaport for a casual crit environment.

As for what’s next: we have some 3 upcoming workshops and events with the Glyphs app team on the horizon. Expect a full announcement very soon and keep your calendars open for the end of July and early August. Here’s a sneak peak of one of the workshops.

And of course we’ll continue our monthly meet-ups with the next one back on our usual Fridays on July 31st. See you tomorrow!

What better way to kick off a soon-to-be rainy 3-day weekend than with a discussion of Mongolian scripts, Dutch revivals, and variable grids.

We opened with NYC-based Mongolian designer Mega Olonbayar, who’s been developing a dingbat-influenced Mongolian type system rooted in the literal anatomical symbols that construct the script. We learned about how these symbols stack to create a varied vertical forward language system. We’re talking stomachs, ponytails, spines, and other abstract renditions of human and animal body parts that stack and flow. Mega takes it a step further by building a photo-collage Mongolian alphabet “Dingbata” that uses the real, physical versions of those symbols. The resulting blocks of text are mesmerizing and deeply rhythmic. The room was into it immediately. There was quick consensus that this would be a killer for branding, and even a thought of using it to teach kids about the human body. Next up, Mega’s hoping to push it into variable font territory, where the forms get even more illustrated and abstract.

From there, City College student Sarah Halsey walked us through her revival of a typeface specimen from Gebroeders Ploos Van Amstel, a Dutch print shop dating back to 1766. She was drawn in by the descending numerals and ball terminals, and committed to staying as faithful to the source material as possible. That faithfulness came with a trade-off, though, leaving the capitals appearing heavy, just like in the original. It opened up one of those classic-type conversations that never fully resolve: how true do you stay to a revival? What gets lost, or gained, when you translate printed metal type into a digital format?

We closed out the night with João Varela’s 10-year journey of constructing letterforms. His path into type started with tagging trains in Lisbon, which eventually became a full-on obsession with how letterforms are actually drawn. While studying at ECAL, he started looking at classical type construction grids ranging from Dürer to Romain du Roi, and decided to build his own. The goal: a digital grid tool that plays nicely with variable fonts and helps bridge the analog-to-digital gap when sketching type. Ten years and 84 Glyphs masters later, he’s done it. The grid guides letterform construction while still leaving space for experimentation and happy accidents. Most of the room immediately wanted to get their hands on it, and there was a lot of energy around making it available as an online tool.

See you in June. Our next event is Wednesday June 24th 7–9 pm at Bowne & Co., 207 Water St, NY, right in the middle of Typographics festival week. Tickets are $10 and can be reserved here. So if you’re already going to be in the city for that, come start off the festival circuit with us in South Street Seaport. Details coming soon. Stay tuned.

From local storefronts, to giant LED billboards, type design has created a cultural language defining New York City since the 19th century. What does it mean to work with letters in New York City now in 2026?

This is the question that Type Tonight NYC is exploring. Type Tonight NYC is an organization made to foster an accessible community, education, and connection around typography in New York City.

Working with type can be a solitary practice. But outside of Glyphs files and the Adobe suite is a community of designers, students, and type-minded people brought together through monthly Type Tonight presentations.

Type Tonight NYC isn’t a conference or space to show off. It’s an event in which 3 presenters show work in process to an unbiased, type minded, supportive audience. Projects get reacted to, questioned, and pushed to be the best they can be. Before and after the presentations, people gather each wearing a hand drawn name tag. Introductions are made, starting discussions about type and beyond.

Everyone is welcome. Designers and non-designers, students and seasoned professionals, people of all backgrounds, identities, and experience levels. We believe the conversation around typography is richer when more kinds of people are in the room.

Type Tonight NYC has always been rooted in a room, and Substack lets us go further. Expect deep dives on upcoming presenters, monthly event recaps, sketchbook documentations, and an ongoing appreciation of NYC’s typographic landscape.

Our next event is tonight, Friday May 22nd 7-9pm at Bowne & Co. 207 Water St NY. Tickets are $10 and can be reserved here. Start the night with introductions and hands-on letterpress printing inside the oldest press in NYC, in South Street Seaport, a neighborhood at the center of New York print culture since the 1800s. From there, we move to the South Street Seaport Museum and into presentations, critique, and dialogue. Come for the type, stay for the community.

Subscribe now