Derek Hamm, M.F.A., professor of graphic design, returned to the Tabor College campus for the fall 2026 semester.
He shared about his experience traveling abroad as he went through his sabbatical in the previous spring.
Q: Can you share the opportunities you had off campus?
The main project that I completed during my sabbatical was the Expert Class in Type Design at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. The class is a nine-month program based in one of the world’s leading collections of printing history that culminates in the design and production of a family of typefaces. My type family, called Fundament after the title of Menno Simons’ best known work, is a contemporary text face with elements based on early Anabaptist sources from the Low Countries. The typeface is currently featured in an exhibition titled From Letter to Book at the Letterenhuis in Antwerp.
I also worked on two new publications: Ten Years of Tallgrass, a book covering the first ten years of the Tallgrass Artist Residency that I co-manage with Manhattan artist Kelly Yarbrough; and a second issue of The Kansas Mirror, a project by photographer Jeremiah Ariaz covering the state of the newspaper industry in Kansas, focused on the aftermath of the police raid on the Marion County Record. The Tallgrass book will be published later this year, and the Mirror will be featured in an exhibition at The Volland Store gallery in Volland, Kansas opening mid-October.
Q: What are 2-3 of your biggest takeaways from this time off teaching at Tabor?
The type design course was formative in a couple of ways: first, it put me in the role of a student again after many years as a teacher which gave me a renewed perspective on what is helpful when learning new things, and second it was an opportunity to create something from scratch — as a graphic designer you are working with text all of the time, but generally the letterforms have been drawn by somebody else. It was a little like a musician spending years playing music composed by others and then saying, “I wonder what it would sound like if I wrote some music myself?” The Tallgrass publication was also a challenge in that it involved contributions from about 100 individuals and I was not only the designer but also editor and writer. Both were forays into a higher degree of authorship.
Q: How do you see intertwining all of this into your teaching this year?
There are several elements from the Expert Class in Type Design that will work their way into my teaching going forward, including a greater understanding of and emphasis on drawing letterforms in Basic Typography and a more robust type design unit in Advanced Typography.
Q: Can you share about your current group of students and what excites you most about this era of design majors?
I always feel like design attracts students with an interesting combination of critical thinking and creativity, and the current group is no exception. I feel like we have developed good working relationships which allows us to be straightforward with each other with the goal of making the work stronger. I also really enjoy working with students from other disciplines taking a course for art credit — there are some hidden creative talents spread around other majors and it’s fun to see that come to the surface.
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Established in 1908 and located in Hillsboro, Kan., Tabor College is a Christian liberal arts college affiliated with the Central, Southern, Eastern, and Latin American Districts of the United States Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches.