This year, Camberwell Press design interns Oliver Boulton and Sam Jones, both graduates of Camberwell College of Arts BA Graphic Design will be running a new workshop at Open House called Particitype, a workshop that introduces a creative and intuitive approach to typography. Here, Oliver and Sam share their thoughts about it.
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Can you tell us more about the workshop you are running for Open House?
Particitype is the creation of letterforms through means of participation and collaboration. People are invited to come by at any time throughout the day at Open House and pick up instructions on how to create certain letters using various tools, objects and materials. So by the end of the day a full set of lowercase and uppercase letters are made by visitors to Open House.
Have you run this workshop before?
Yes, we’ve run it a few times now. Particitype as a workshop has really been born from our third year work on the Graphic Design course at Camberwell. Particitype made up a large part of our final year work that consisted of doing a workshop with around 15 Foundation students and then a one day event where we made a full set of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and glyphs based on people’s instructions. The event was streamed over our website particitype.com; where the instructions were sent through.
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What is the idea behind Particitype?
It’s about opening up the design process to an audience. It’s handing over control to an audience and allowing for open-ended results to happen. Every time we put this workshop on we always attempt to create as many letterforms, numbers and characters in one day as possible. It’s not about being precious with design decisions; it’s about acting on intuition and producing work quickly. It’s also very much about people and creating an experience that can only be captured by a participating audience.
What are you most looking forward to about Open House?
We’re most excited about doing Particitype with a new and much younger audience than we have dealt with before. As well as this it will be interesting to introduce Particitype to a local community as the idea of collaboration, community and conversation are elements that are particularly strong in Particitype.
Can you tell us more about your backgrounds, what courses did you study, and your experience working at Camberwell Press?
Both of us graduated last year from the Graphic Design course here at Camberwell, where we began working together in our second year and discussing plans to do a project with the idea of a growing typeface involving handing over control to people. A years work later and we had Particitype. Since graduating we have been working in Camberwell Press as Associate Designers. Whilst at the Press we have worked on a
variety of jobs that predominantly include the design of publications, one of which includes this years Fine Art Catalogue. The Press has really allowed us to develop as designers and professionals, constantly working to deadlines, speaking with clients and printers. The things that may seem small at Camberwell Press have proven to be extremely helpful to us as developing designers.
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What are your plans for the future?
Aside from Camberwell Press we are both working together on developing Particitype and continuing to put on workshops like this one. As well as this we currently are working on building a practice of our own.
How can people find out more about Particitype?
We have our website particitype.com which has documentation from when we carried Particitype out through our website. It also has a tutorial on ‘How to Particitype’.
All images thanks to Oliver Boulton and Sam Jones.
Related Links:
http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2015/6/27/Camberwell-Open-House-2015
www.arts.ac.uk/camberwell/courses/undergraduate/ba-graphic-design