CALLIGRAPHY • GRAPHIC DESIGN • ILLUSTRATION Exploring the uses of handwritten letterform, gesture and space In 2002 I began developing two calligraphy classes that I teach online year round at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The beginning class is Calligraphy & Letterform, which conforms roughly to the onsite class and is required for graduation in the Graphic Design department. The course covers the historical hands and history of writing in 15 modules, with an introduction to writing in layers, gestural writing, tool making, and brush stroke. We focus on the "why" of writing as well as the "how to". Advanced Calligraphy was written in 2005 using Andre Gürtler's excellent text "Experiments with Letterform and Calligraphy" supplemented with my own videos, demos, slideshows, assignments and explanations. The outcomes are related to the book arts as well as the painterly arts, and are directed to gaining a more thorough understanding of the visual field and the creative process. Here you will soon find a gallery of the work of some of my students. In the meantime here is one: By Rebecca Cook. It is the result of an assignment in which the student studies spacing, organizing the visual field with gestural brush renderings of "letterform segments" or symbols, layered and balanced as a non-legible written form (strokes applied left to right, in successive rows) while exploring the possibilities of color and spatial depth.