Common Mistakes Made by Digital Typography Course Students in Typography Design with Adobe Illustrator Software and Best Practice Examples

“Typography” is a discipline that continues to expand parallel to the continuous development of printing methods. It is widely covered in the curricula of Painting, Art Teaching and Visual Communication Design Departments - which have become increasingly widespread in recent years – and especially in the field of Graphic Design. Digital applications in typography education have an important place within these curricula. In those, students develop their competencies through various software. The software used in this context might be covered under three main groups: Bitmap (Pixel Based Software), Vector Based Software and 3D Software. This research focuses on works done in Adobe Illustrator, which is a vector-based software, and aims to identify the common mistakes that graphic design students make while using this software in typography applications, and to reveal the most effective methods and tools for eliminating these. In this context, in this study, student studies of   Atılım  University Digital Typography course are discussed. These studies are systematically classified on the basis of the detection of frequently made mistakes, and studies selected by monographic sampling method are discussed in order to represent the common problems of these classes. The findings reveal that some of the mistakes frequently made in these studies may be due to the deficiencies in students' knowledge and skills in mathematics and geometry. However, it has also been observed that some of the faulty applications may be due to lack of software knowledge. In the conclusion part of the text, based on these determinations, suggestions are made regarding the central examination system, the student admission method, and the educational environment and tools that faculty members might effectuate.