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.

23 April 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 177—Rotunda Sketches

There is a small scrapbook in the original W.A. Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library. Among its miscellaneous contents are five small sheets of paper bearing undated outline drawings of rotunda alphabets. [1] Three sheets contain sets of capitals, one has a mix of capitals and minuscules, and one has minuscules only. Two alphabets are sketched on notepaper from The Carolina hotel in Pinehurst, North Carolina while one set of letters has been drawn on the reverse of an …
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14 April 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 171—Der Bohemeverein

W.A. Dwiggins spent his adolescence in Cambridge, Ohio. He returned there in the spring of 1903, following his studies at The School of Illustration and a brief stint working in a studio with his lettering teacher Frederic W. Goudy. A year and a half later, in the fall of 1904, he left—with his new bride Mabel—for Hingham, Massachusetts to work with Goudy at his relocated Village Press. During the short time he was back in Cambridge Dwiggins designed and typeset …
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12 April 2019

Blue Pencil

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 169—”Der Professorverein”

W.A. Dwiggins attended The School of Illustration in Chicago from November 1899 until sometime in 1901. [1] The school’s short existence, which lasted from September 1898 until July 1904, was tumultuous. In the early years it grew rapidly with its success most visibly marked by a mushrooming faculty which its founder Frank Holme (1868–1904), tongue in cheek, referred to as “Der Professorverein.” This article is a look at the faculty of The School of Illustration, its growth and its make-up.
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LEGACY OF LETTERS

HELVETICA SUBWAY

SHOP

CODEX, the journal of letterforms

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