Nearing the end of my Master’s in Interdisciplinary Design, a program devised to produce design professionals ready to take on anything, I needed to solidify a thesis. Within the degree program there were classes on branding, digital illustration, videography, typography, and web design. Each course, instructed by knowledgeable and committed faculty; I was privileged to be their pupil. For my thesis project I decided to build a web app that incorporated all of the skills we learned throughout the program.

I concluded that the visual nature of type makes it impossible to ignore, that communication is the essential nature of the internet. I was thinking, scroll-stopping ideas (memes) and that it's impossible to not read words set in bold type (the mind instantly recognizes words like that). Type on Point would be a grown up meme generator, a place to flex the typographic capabilities of the web, except I had little idea of what the web’s capabilities were, nor was I skilled enough to write the JavaScript for such a site. I would have to learn in real time.

I had built a number of basic websites with HTML and CSS in the past, but nothing with this level of interactivity. At the time I wasn’t entirely sure it was even possible to build my vision. I started a semester early to do a bit of discovery work, knowing it would take extra effort to build my pièce de résistance—plus, I wanted to mitigate the risk of complete failure.

I can remember when the first bit of code started working. I was attempting to display the value from a text input within a container, a “div”, above it. At the time, I didn’t even know how the code worked, but I was hooked. As I learned more about coding, I heavily borrowed code from codepen.io, where there is an endless supply of great front-end ideas with working code. I still use codepen to this day. Every little success after that inspired me to see the potential for even more functionality.

Eventually I learned about JavaScript libraries and how to install them. The first one I installed was 'div-to-image' which grabbed the container, the one that had the text in it, and turned it into a .png image. Then, defying the odds, I figured out how to transfer that image to a folder on the server where my website was hosted. The day my classmates learned that they could post images directly from the TyPo Studio to the site's gallery was the most traffic the site ever saw. That event also showed me all the ways the site could break. And did it break.

I spent a number of years after graduating working on the site. I had big plans to turn it into a business, and that it would catch on if only I had the right features. I kept pursuing this dream and turned the site into a fully featured social media app using PHP (a server-side language) by making queries to a relational database. All of this was new territory for me and I learned it all simply because I wanted to build something cool.

Up to this day not many people have logged-in or attempted to create a TyPo (the name I gave to the text-images), and that's on me. I shouldn't have expected that people would use a product simply because I had created it.

So, why wasn’t this a waste of my time?

  • I learned how to code, and think like a developer. I'm an artist at heart.
  • I gained confidence in solving problems and figuring it out on my own. Starting to code is difficult, especially if you don’t have the support of someone who can tell you what you don’t know. Coding is all about the documentation, reading it, then putting it into practice.
  • I learned the hard way, to not build things that are based on personal interests only. BTW, I was hardly aware of the discipline of UX when I started this journey. Although, I did usability tests with family and friends, that’s not the same as validating the need.
  • I learned a ton about typography and I got to practice typesetting as I built the site. Typography takes time to master—I’m still learning.
  • I now understand how database structure influences the ability to create a functional UI.

I built Type on Point before AI came along and changed the game; I've been interested in building tools for the web for a long time. Before all of this when I came across a tool that manipulated CSS or made it possible to create something out of basic web elements, I wanted to know how it was done. Until I took it upon myself to build the tool I wanted, I had no idea how it all worked.

Every once in a while I visit the site typeonpoint.com and think, “damn, this is still cool”. It's unique, but it’s built for an audience of one. Me. And that’s alright, I like having my very own design tool; I can modify it however I like. Although, sharing in the experiecnce is my ultimate goal. Learning to write code granted me the ability to create more freely than ever before, and with that I gained confidence that I can build anything I can imagine.