Typography: Discipline and Uses

Omnivorous by nature, today’s information society generates volumes of textual material that are then converted into knowledge by what is essentially the technological manipulation of form. In this context—and by way of introduction to the present master’s degree—we might say that what society has also done is to assign the university community the task of providing greater substance in the design and presentation of that textual material. For in the end, this material constitutes both our original point of departure and a repeated port of call in the process by which we create a definitive format for graphic communication. And by virtue of the humanist curriculum underlying higher education, it might be argued that the university is the agent empowered to improve the quality of our lives through its effective definition and configuration of the social arenas in which we interact.

In keeping with the above, the master’s degree Typography: Discipline and Uses opens the way to new forms, systems and possibilities in the production of information, stressing the importance of understanding past developments as a means of creating innovative solutions to future needs. This approach is designed to overcome the formal mannerism of the discipline to show students how knowledge can be constructed through the determination of specific uses and the connotational capacities of the forms required to facilitate them. Students will learn to handle the concepts of information, relationships, dynamics, virtuality and sustainability from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The general and specific content of this master’s degree program is designed to facilitate two principal types of work:

• Analysis and critical evaluation of communicative situations, as a means of developing new methodological paradigms.
• Formalisation of communicative techniques to establish new and alternative parameters for the presentation of knowledge and information.

Emphasis will also be placed on the role of creativity in the work outlined above, as it is a necessary and positive value in our social and cultural fabric and a catalyst for the innovation of communicative structures.

Course structure

The master’s degree, Typography: Discipline and Uses, has a structure of 60 + 60 ECTS credits [see the section "Program structure"].

The first 60 ECTS credits correspond to train-up modules, which must be completed by students admitted to the course with previous studies equivalent to only 180 ECTS credits.

The remaining 60 credits correspond to master’s level modules for students already in possession of 240 ECTS credits, who will be given the choice of two specialised pathways: academic or professional.