Paul Shaw Letter Design

Reviews

Reviews emphasizes books and fonts, but also includes magazines, logos, signage, ephemera and whatever catches my eye and ire.
Book reviews focus on content, but also take into account editing, layout and design. Font reviews are in-depth explorations of a typeface: the intentions of its designer; its origins, context and purpose; and its relationship to other typefaces, past and present. The reviews are a counterbalance to the negative nature of the Blue Pencil dissections. They are critical explorations and analyses rather than promotional vehicles.

14 December 2012

Blue Pencil no. 25—A last word on About More Alphabets

Jerry Kelly has emailed me (12 December 2012) with a response to Blue Pencil no. 24 but also with a request not to post his comments. Although I will honor his request not to quote him or his email I will respond to two of his assertions. First, he claims that Comenius Antiqua had oldstyle ﬁgures and suggests I look at the Berthold Exklusiv specimen. Although I am not sure which specimen from Berthold he has in mind, my copy …
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12 December 2012

Blue Pencil no. 24—Jerry Kelly response to Blue Pencil no. 23

Jerry Kelly has emailed me about Blue Pencil no. 24. Here is his commentary with my responses.

While it was good to see Paul Shaw acknowledge that “Kelly is right,” “Kelly is absolutely right,” “Kelly is making a subtle but important distinction,” “mea [Shaw] culpa,”; etc., about many errors I pointed out in his review of “About More Alphabets,” I’m afraid that his response to me introduced yet more errors.

[I did acknowledge errors in Blue Pencil no. 23 but three times …
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7 December 2012

Blue Pencil no. 23—Jerry Kelly response to Zapfiana no. 1

Jerry Kelly responded on 5 December 2012 with this email detailing alleged errors in my recent Zapﬁana no. 1 post. I have annotated his email (adding text to his excerpts from my post to make the context clearer), indicating where he is right and where I believe I am. The errors that he found in my post have been corrected.

Paul;

Truthfully, I did not want to spend too much time on a lengthy correction of the erroneous information in what you …
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2 December 2012

Blue Pencil no. 21—Zapfiana no. 2: What Our Lettering Needs

Cover of What Our Lettering Needs by Rick Cusick (2011). Design by Rick Cusick.

What Our Lettering Needs: The Contribution of Hermann Zapf to Calligraphy & Type Design at Hallmark Cards
Rick Cusick
Rochester: RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2011
136 pp.
6.75 x 10 in.
softcover
$24.95

http://carypress.rit.edu/subject/calligraphy

introduction by Sumner Stone
designed by Rick Cusick
set in Crown Roman and Italic

full color

What Our Lettering Needs: The Contribution of Hermann Zapf to Calligraphy & Type Design at Hallmark Cards by Rick Cusick, a Hallmark “lifer”, is also published by …
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1 December 2012

Blue Pencil no. 20—Zapfiana no. 1: About More Alphabets

Title page spread, About More Alphabets (2011). Typography by Jerry Kelly.

About More Alphabets
Jerry Kelly and Robert Bringhurst
Rochester: The Typophiles and RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2011
Typophile Chap Book New Series no. 3
112 pp.
4.5 x 7 in.
$35

http://carypress.rit.edu/publications/books/about-more-alphabets.html

[updated 7 December 2012 to reflect corrections pointed out by Jerry Kelly]

Hermann Zapf (b. 1918), widely considered to be one of the preeminent type designers of the 20th century, has continued to design new typefaces and revise earlier ones in the 21st …
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26 September 2012

Book Review—Type Revivals

Title page, Type Revivals

Type Revivals: What are they? Where did they come from? Where are they going?
Jerry Kelly
New York: The Typophiles, 2011

Typophile Monographs New Series no. 27

Based on a talk given at the ATypI congress in St. Petersburg, Russia 2008

Design & typography by Jerry Kelly. Set in Adobe Garamond Premier types.
16 pp. 6″x9″. Black and white; illustrated. 300 copies printed.

Blue Pencil has not previously tackled monographs or articles, but there is no reason that they should fall outside of …
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31 August 2011

Der Typografische Kanon

Prater Gastsgätte Biergarten in Berlin

During my visit to Berlin this past July I went to the Prater beer garden with a group of type geeks led by Indra Kupferschmid, Florian Hardwig and American expat Dan Reynolds. Among the others was Christoph Koeberlin who asked us to name our ﬁve essential type books. Although I do not read German I own and cherish many German and Swiss books and so chose ﬁve of them for my list: Buchkunst im …
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9 May 2011

Book Review—Departures: Five Milestone Font Families by Emigre

Departures: Five Milestone Font Families by Emigre
Rudy VanderLans
Berkeley, California: Emigre, 2011

141 pp. 5″x8″. Black and white; illustrated.
$14 or free with purchase of the ﬁve Museum of Modern Art “milestone” font families ($164). Visit Emigre.com.

This small book has been published, “on the occasion of the acquisition of ﬁve of our font families by The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2011,” according to Rudy VanderLans of …
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29 April 2011

Bartolomeo Sanvito: A basic bibliography

This is a simple bibliography regarding Bartolomeo Sanvito for anyone interested in the Paduan calligrapher, whether or not they are able to afford the new book by Albinia de la Mare, Laura Nuvoloni et al. It is in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order so that the evolution of Sanvito scholarship can be traced.

De Kunert, Silvio. “Un padovano ignoto ed un suo memoriale de’ primi anni del Cinquecento (1505–1511),” Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova 10 (1907), pp. 1–16 and 64–73.

Wardrop, James. …
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29 April 2011

Bartolomeo Sanvito: The Life and Work of a Renaissance Scribe

Julius Caesar, Commentaria di Bello Gallico et Civile, fol. 4 c.1465

Bartolomeo Sanvito: The Life and Work of a Renaissance Scribe
(The Handwrting of the Italian Humanists II)
A.C. de la Mare and Laura Nuvoloni
edited by Anthony Hobson and Christopher de Hamel
with contributions from Scott Dickerson, Ellen Cooper Erdreich and Anthony Hobson
Paris: Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, 2009

463 pp., 196 images
$325.00
Designed by Humphrey Stone

Albinia de la Mare (1932–2001) spent the greater part of her working life as a paleographer investigating the life and …
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