22 November 2012
On Saturday, November 17 a small group of New York area lettering enthusiasts finally made their way to New Haven to see Yale University’s lettering delights. It was a trip that had been planned in the summer and cancelled twice due to inclement weather. The idea for the trip was sparked by an article on lettering at Yale written by Reed Reibstein for an upcoming issue of Codex. The trip was co-led by Reed and myself with Nick Sherman (Mr. …
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18 October 2012
Magnificent Mile and The Loop, Chicago
Wednesday, October 10
4 pm to 6 pm
students $10
professionals $20
sponsored jointly by AIGA Chicago and the STA
Chicago is one of the world’s great urban centers, noted for its rich array of excellent architecture spanning over a century. This makes it also one of the best places to see a wide variety of lettering, especially in the heart of the city: The Loop. I will lead a walk down the Magnificent Mile, across the River and around …
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11 October 2012
The lettering tour of the Magnificent Mile and The loop in Chicago was sold out within two hours, before I could even properly post an announcement of it. The tour itself was equally a success. We met at the Chicago Water Tower (William W. Boyington, 1869) and, after a brief look at the Fourth Presbyterian Church (Ralph Adams Cram, 1914), walked south along Michigan Avenue to The Loop, stopping to discuss the Allerton Hotel with its Tip Top Tap sign, …
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20 September 2012
Great news! MIT Press has given me advance notice that Helvetica and the New York City Subway System has been shortlisted for The Art Book Prize (formerly the Banister Fletcher Prize), which is administered by the Authors’ Club in London. The shortlist of eight titles will be formally announced at the opening of The London Art Book Fair this Thursday evening, September 20th, at The Whitechapel Gallery. The winner will be announced later this year at a reception in late November.
18 September 2012
Inland Printer (July 1901). Cover design by Frederic W. Goudy (border and masthead) and W.A. Dwiggins (illustration)
At the Crossroads: Living Letterform Traditions
2012 American Printing History Conference
Columbia College Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts
October 12–13, 2012
I will be speaking at this year’s APHA Conference in Chicago (as part of Panel One between 9:45 am and 11 am on Saturday, October 13) on “The Roots of the Big Three: Goudy, Cooper, Dwiggins and the Frank Holme School of Illustration”. My talk is …
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11 June 2012
For New York lettering enthusiasts or those who will be visiting the city this summer there are two unheralded exhibitions that are a must-see.
The first is “Gorey Preserved” at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Butler Library, 6th floor, 114th Street and Broadway). It is on display until July 27. The other is “The Tony & Gerry Show” at Pratt Manhattan, GradComD Exhibition Space (144 West 14th Street, 7th floor). It ends August 9.
Edward Gorey (1925–2000) is best …
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11 June 2012
Barber Shop, Crown Heights (Brooklyn) (2007)
Last week (June 7–9) the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) held its annual conference in New York City. For the final session on Friday, June 8 of the 2012 SEGD Conference: The Bridge Anna Sharp and her colleagues at the New York design firm Two Twelve put together a short interstitial slide show of lettering in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Their goal was to “depict the diversity of cultures, essence of the two boroughs, …
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25 May 2012
Wood-Rich Color, Woodhaven, Queens (2008)
Woodhaven and Richmond Hill
Sunday, June 10
11 am to 2 pm
$25
$15 for SEGD 212 Conference attendees
The next lettering tour of New York will be of the adjoining neighborhoods of Woodhaven and Richmond Hill in Queens, accessible via the elevated J train. Both have solid business areas with good examples of pre-digital commercial lettering: paint shops, jewelers, candy stores, beauty salons and pet shops. There is also the usual institutional lettering to be found in New …
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17 May 2012
From Ruling Pens to Wood Type: A Special Three-day Lettering and Type Intensive
with Luca Barcellona, Lucio Passerini and Paul Shaw
at the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione
Wednesday through Friday 25–27 July
Ornate wood type from Pirola at the Tipoteca
Alta Price and Paul Shaw are opening the workshop portion of their Legacy of Letters 2012 tour to those with tight schedules and other constraints who would otherwise be unable to join us by structuring the workshop so that it can be taken separately from …
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28 March 2012
Type Americana 2, a conference devoted to the history of American type design, will take place May 4–6 at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, Washington. It will include talks by Paul F. Gehl, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation at the Newberry Library, on Robert Hunter Middleton and Douglas McMurtrie, two of the key figures behind the type design program at Ludlow Typograph; Cathleen A. Baker on the Roycroft career of papermaker and paper historian Dard Hunter; …
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28 March 2012
TDC Type Walk with Paul Shaw
Woodside and Jackson Heights
Sunday, April 29
11 am to 2 pm
TDC members $35
Non members $45
El Indio Amazonico (Jackson Heights, Queens)
The Spring 2012 TDC Type Walk will return to Queens, specifically to the neighboring neighborhoods of Woodside and Jackson Heights. These are two ethnically strong neighborhoods—Irish, Filipino, Korean, Ecuadorean, Colombian, Chinese and more—which means that we will see a wide variety of commercial lettering as well as the usual institutional examples. Thus, there will be Irish …
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8 March 2012
At the invitation of Aleanna Lüthi-Garrecht, Arthur Hoener and Amy Papaelias, professors in the Art Department at SUNY New Paltz, I was invited to speak to their design students on Helvetica and the New York City Subway System on March 7.
Poster design by Aleanna Lüthi-Garrecht
The invitation gave me a great excuse not only to see an old friend (Aleanna and I met on one of the Legacy of Letters tours of Rome in the late 1990s), but to …
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