Paul Shaw Letter Design

Sign for Savoy Taylors Guild Ltd., The Strand, London (c.1906).

Sgraffito on a wall in the Giudecca section of Venice.

Detail of a neon sign for a barbershop in Grottaferrata, Italy.

Detail of page from Les Ecritures Financiere, et Italienne-Bastarde (1647) by Louis Barbedor, a French writing master.

Detail of store sign for Cortese Frizzoti in Venice. The letters in black have been painted over a gold ground which covers a former store name in mosaic tile.

Medieval inscription in Round Gothic capitals. In the cloister of S. Giovanni in Laterano in Rome.

Capital E and G stencils from collection of Eric Kindel, Reading, England.

Ghost signs with printer’s fist on wall of Rue de la Commune in Montreal.

Detail of painted directional sign for Coney Island covering mosaic sign indicating Up Town Trains. 53rd Street station of the R line in Brooklyn.

Punches for punctuation cut by Giambattista Bodoni at the Museo Bodoniano in Parma, Italy.

Detail of cover of Warren’s Standard Printing Papers specimen book by S.D. Warren (1929). Design, ornament and lettering by W.A. Dwiggins.

21 August 2016

Articles

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 36—Knopf Colophons

Recently, I gave a talk at The Book Club of California titled Beyond the Spine: A Closer Look at the Book Designs of W.A. Dwiggins for Alfred A. Knopf. While preparing the talk a few months ago, Jennifer Sime, the executive director of the club, asked me if I could prepare an article on short notice for the club’s quarterly newsletter. I jumped at the offer because it gave me an opportunity to write in depth about the colophons in …
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23 June 2016

Legacy of Letters

Legacy of Letters 2017—Erik Spiekermann at the Tipoteca

If you don’t recognize this face you haven’t been paying attention to graphic design, information design, typography and type design for the past three decades. This is Erik Spiekermann. He was trained, in the true German printing tradition, as a compositor before working at H. Berthold GmbH under the legendary Gunter Gerhard Lange. For Berthold he both designed typefaces (the revivals of Berliner Grotesk and LoType for instance) and type specimens. In 1987 he also wrote the wonderfully …
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19 May 2016

Tours & Events

Lettering Walk in Newark

Flaking gold leaf business address in Newark. Photograph by Paul Shaw (2005)
Detail of the cast lettering on the facade of The Federal Trust Company building (1926) in Newark. Photograph by Paul Shaw (2005).
CooperType is holding the second annual Typographics conference between June 13 and 23. To complement the tours scheduled for Sunday, June 19, I will be leading a lettering tour of Newark, New Jersey.
Sunday, June 19
10 am to 2 pm
$25; $20 for students
maximum …
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LEGACY OF LETTERS

HELVETICA SUBWAY

SHOP

CODEX, the journal of letterforms

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