[Talk] Generating, Generative Typography

[romellogoodman]

Chinatown.js Talk Submission

Talk Title: Generating, Generative Typography: Teaching coding in the era of personal software

Talk Description:

How do we teach design thinking when our design tools have fundamentally changed?

For four years, I've taught Generative Typography through MICA, Cooper Union, and Letterform Archive. Then AI coding tools arrived and generated in a single prompt what used to take my students weeks to build.

This made me realize I'd been teaching it backwards. My students no longer need to spend weeks learning syntax before they can think about systems. We can spend more time learning how to create the system itself focusing on modular type and parametric design, using code as the medium to express these ideas.

So I rebuilt the course around a new premise: teach typography as a generative system first, then use AI to accelerate the code learning. This talk shares the process of rebuilding Generative Typography for this new era. It isn't about replacing code with AI or defending code from AI, but finally being able to teach both the thinking and the making without one drowning out the other.

Name: Romello Goodman

Pronouns: he, they

Insta Handle (optional): https://instagram.com/mellogood

Website (optional): https://romellogoodman.com/

[elieandersen]

Hi Romello! It's so nice to see your name pop up here :)

We'd love for you to present this talk at next week's ChinatownJS. Could you please confirm your availability and send over a headshot I can use for promotion to ctjs@sanctuary.computer?

Feel free to bring along your friends or anyone who might be interested, and come as early as you like on event day — You can work from Index, if you like! We'll ask all presenters to arrive by 6:15PM to have a bite and tech check before everyone else arrives.

Thank you so much!