Digital Typography
MIT's Media Arts and Sciences course looks at type as word, symbol, and form through the lens of algorithmic manipulation. Topics include semantic filtering, letterforms designed to be inherently unstable, and experiments with spoken letters, alongside a survey of typographic history and its shift into digital tools. Weekly assignments have students writing Java programs that manipulate and reinterpret type, treating typography as a computational problem as much as a visual one. Course materials, available through MIT OpenCourseWare, include assignment sheets and readings tracing the tradition from print typography into digital-era experimentation. The course is aimed at students already comfortable with programming and design fundamentals, and it treats type not as static text but as material to be programmed, distorted, and reconstructed.