Visit the free to access “Talking Points: What is Typography” resource. Enable children to understand how typography can be used creatively to express thoughts and communicate ideas visually. Make some “Visual Notes” in sketchbooks.

Explore the work of Louise Fili who is a pioneer in establishing herself as a woman working in Typography. Use the free to access “Talking Points: Louise Fili” resource to see how she and her team created a poster for the New York Subway. 

Invite the children to create their own letters in a playful way to discover arrangements they like. Use the “Cut Out Typography” resource.

Stick the outcomes in your sketchbook. Think about what you like about the letters you create, and what you might like to develop further.

Create your own letters of a typeface in an intuitive and fun way in the “Create Your Own Typography” resource.

Work on large sheets or in your sketchbooks. Explore as many variations of letters as you can. 

If you have time, develop a whole word or even phrase, but pay just as much attention to each letter. 

Pupils will be drawing on previous knowledge and skills in creating varied mark-making. For a recap on mark-making explore “Finding Marks Made by Artists“.

Sometimes we need help to make our drawings visually powerful. 

Use the “Making Stronger Drawings” resource to help you develop strong mark-making skills. 

If you don’t have maps to work on you can do the same exercise working on newspaper or other paper which is pre-printed. 

The next stage of the project is to apply your new typography skills and your powerful drawing skills to make a visual map. 

Maps don’t just have to tell us where to go. They can also be very personal places which reveal things about the artist that made them, or they can be comments about culture, place and time. They can also be a place where messaging is concealed and revealed. They can be based upon reality or imagination, or both.

Introduce children to a selection of artists who use maps in their work to express identity. Create “Visual Notes” in sketchbooks inspired by your choice of artists.

Choose from the following of free to access Talking Points:

• “Talking Points: Grayson Perry ‘Map of Days’” Please Note: Please be advised that at 1.51 of the video via this link there is inappropriate language shown on the map. You may wish to show up to this point or to skip past the shot of the language in question.

• “Talking Points: Paula Scher”

• “Talking Points: Chris Kenny“

Or explore the design and typography used in the visual Marauder’s Map using the “Talking Points: Hogwarts’ Maps” resource.

Using ideas developed from the Typography activity in Week 2, follow the “3D Visual Maps” resource to understand how we build on the idea of creating visual text, and how this can be applied to map making.

Ask the children to use explorations of identity to annotate their 3D Visual Maps with typography, references, thoughts, ideas and associations. They can do this both in 2D and 3D, using cut out paper. See “Manipulating Paper from 2d-3d” for inspiration.

Questions to ask:

Where am I in my map? Why have I chosen to place myself here and what is around me?

What words do I associate with home and where I live?

What things or places am I surrounded by and why is this important to me?

Lay the maps out on the floor if possible. You could even use the playground or school hall if the weather/space allocation permits.

Ask the children to walk around each other’s work. Take time to absorb and discuss.

Use the resource here to help you run a class “crit” to finish the project.