Type Crit Crew is a new virtual one-on-one typography class from industry experts

Monotype type designer Juan Villanueva has launched a new resource called Type Crit Crew, which aims to give budding type designers constructive feedback for free. The mission behind the one-on-one online mentoring sessions is to help make type design more accessible to students of all levels and backgrounds, especially during this period of home-working, and to spread “our love and passion for type,” Villanueva says.

A wide range of type professionals have signed up as mentors, covering subjects as diverse as calligraphy, specific software like RoboFont, Glyphs and FontLab 5, type engineering, digital typesetting and proofing. As you might expect given Villanueva’s role, a few of the professionals involved work with Monotype, but there are also designers from Hoefler&Co, LucasFonts, Google Fonts, Sumotype Foundry, XYZ Type, and many more. Anyone with experience in type design can offer their expertise, whether you work for a foundry or yourself, are self-taught or professionally trained, have released dozens of fonts or just one.

Villanueva is keen to stress that the scheme is for designers based anywhere in the world, and that “student is more of a mindset than a strict definition” so it’s open to anyone keen to hone their skills rather than just those enrolled with an institution. There’s specialists in a huge range of scripts involved in the project, from experts in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic typefaces right through to Thai, Khmer, Burmese, Cham and Tham. The only stipulation is that work discussed must be personal work or part of a student project, rather than commercial or client work.

The monthly crits last between 15 and 30 minutes and are conducted over video call. You can find out more about Type Crit Crew and sign up as a student of instructor, here.