The next workshop covered the basics of typography. The previous week, I introduced the second graders to the idea of using different typefaces to create certain effects and to “match” the mood of the story, character, and/or plot device. I did this again this week by reading them another wonderful book The Serif Fairy, by Rene Sigfried. This book allowed me to build upon some of the concepts I introduced earlier, plus teach the students the names of a handful of typefaces.
Did the kids like the book? Yes! They began to get a little antsy toward the end, but they had an absolute blast poring through the illustrations and identifying the letters the illustrator used to create the characters, animals, trees, flowers, and buildings populating the story. I think the students more or less “got” the idea that letters have aesthetic qualities, but I don’t think it really sunk in that typefaces have actual names (like Garamond, Futura, etc.)
For the next activity, I wanted to give the students a chance to apply what they learned about the aesthetic quality of typefaces. I created a series of pages where I typed in two typefaced versions of one word, where one typeface “matched” or “fit” the word, and the other typeface obviously didn’t. For example, one page had two versions of the word “Tinkerbell,” with one written with a curly, delicate typeface, the other with a big, black, chunky typeface. The activity consisted of me holding up each page and asking the students which typeface “matched” the word, and to explain why they thought so.
Again, they seemed to really enjoy this activity also. Some students seemed able to make the connection between typeface quality and the meaning and connotations of a word, but the activity also appeared to go over the heads of a few.
The final and main activity of the day was to have the students go to the computers to play with the typefaces of their “I am” poems. The point of the activity was to have the students choose different words in their poems and change the typeface of each of these words in order to emphasize their meaning. However, the students didn’t really appear to grok this. They were able to figure out how to change the fonts and sizes of the words in their poems, but they picked fonts based on how they looked (i.e., if they liked them), and they didn’t seem to entirely grasp the concept of changing the typeface of individual words in a sentence. What most of them tended to do was change the typeface of each sentence, rather than cherrypicking key words in their poems and changing the typefaces of those.
If I were to do this activity again, I would probably include one or two additional short activities prior to having the students go to the computers and work on their poems. These activities would continue to reinforce the connection between typefaces and meaning of words. I will be doing this activity with the third graders next, so I will implement these activities then.
