How to design a teaching and learning aid in the field of type design for students of visual communication in digital transformation? Because of today‘s digitalization, the question of how to transform any analogue teaching and learning material, i.e. specialist literature as a basis, into an online platform, prompted me to do this. The unresolved relationship between didactics and technology was considered unresolved in a paper published in 2004 and, to this day, this state of affairs has not changed in any noticeable way. An investigation based on an online platform is of continued relevance, if lecturers at universities can be believed. This basis, once created, can play a central role with regard to an interactive medium. Recently, scientists have shown increased interest in online learning tools, as pandemics have repeatedly struck the world. The visualization of teaching and learning material for type design has a great potential, aspects of which are to be studied by this paper.

The origin of my interest in developing a teaching and learning platform has to do with my educational background. In 2004 – 2007, I completed an apprenticeship as a graphic designer. In the following years, various further training courses in typography and type design followed. The specialized teaching and learning in typography was mainly done with the help of analogue exercise sheets, which were meant to train a student’s eye. The theoretical basics of typography and type history were taken from textbooks.

Through the lively exchange with my fellow students during my training sessions, I learned about their needs with regard to alternative learning materials. For this purpose and to maintain motivation and performance, tools were visualized on an e-learning platform. The commonly available teaching materials should, however, not entirely be replaced by digital media. Thus, my teaching and learning platform should be used in addition to current teaching materials. 

The present research mainly refers to interactive studies. The content of the e-learning platform focuses on the theoretical basics of type design and occasionally includes practical exercises. The following four areas are covered: introduction, history, classification, and writing. In addition, I designed several interactive tools to try and present ideas in a surprisingly interactive way to transfer type design into the here and now. These tools are simple, visualized exercises helping students to acquire a basic theoretical knowledge of type design. With their help, you can consolidate what you have learned. The teaching and learning platform is divided into two different areas, Learning Tools and Interactive Tools, which are designed to test the knowledge learned. 

Looking both into the past and into the future and with the help of my research, I thus established a first hypothesis. The aim is to create a lively, motivated classroom approach, which can be supplemented and optimized by an interactive platform in addition to the existing, analogous teaching and learning material. Thanks to this additional didactic and psychological knowledge, visual experiments gain in depth and show new approaches to the design of interactive teaching and learning materials.