Books
These are books which I have written, co-written or edited along with books which contain essays or articles of mine.
25 February 2013
Helvetica and the New York City Subway System came up short at the Art Book Prize ceremony this evening at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. The winner was Architecture in Uniform: Design and Building for the Second World War by Jean-Louis Cohen (Paris: Editions Hazan, distributed by Yale University Press, 2011).
11 November 2012
The Art Book Prize in London has narrowed its field of finalists to two books: Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux and Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story by myself (both published by MIT Press). The winner will be announced by The Authors’ Club on Thursday, November 22nd at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. I doubt I will be there, but if any British friends have a chance to stop in at the gallery at 16 Wharf Road, …
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21 December 2011
Season’s Greetings from Paul Shaw at Blue Pencil, Legacy of Letters and Paul Shaw / Letter Design. This card, set in Alejandro Paul’s Poem Script, is an outgrowth of The Roots of Type: Scripts, a book on digital script typefaces and their background that Abby Goldstein and I have been working on for several years. We expect it to be ready in 2012. Stay tuned for updates on its progress.
Joyous New Year
17 December 2011
The current issue of Visible Language (45.3, pp. 261–263) contains a review of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System by the editor Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl. It is very laudatory and concludes on this positive note, “The book design facilitates taking different paths through the material, the visual examples tell their own story. Look carefully at the dates, when something was created and whether it lasted. The running narrative is staightforward, while the footnotes go into historical detail and the …
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9 December 2011
Not only has Helvetica and the New York City Subway System been selected for the AIGA 50 Books competition but is has been declared one of the Best Books of 2011 by the writers and editors of Slate. It is one of only 17 books chosen and shares that honor with such lumimaries as Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Tina Fey (author of Bossypants). It is number seven in the queue, but since the books are not ranked that …
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23 November 2011
Although it has been talked about since late September I just got my complimentary copy of Typography Sketch Books by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) today. So I apologize for being behind the curve. My six pages show sketches, proofs and notes for my Origins, Kolo and Donatello typefaces. (The former was a custom typeface for Origins, the cosmetics firm, and is not available for general sale.) The book is not limited to sketches …
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31 October 2011
9/11 Memorial Leaves Its Mark on the Subway by David W. Dunlap New York Times Cityroom.blog
“Until recently, Helvetica’s dominance was so assured that the M.I.T. Press could publish Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story by Paul Shaw, a design historian,” writes David W. Dunlap. “He concluded his account by stating that white-on-black Helvetica signs were ‘now as much a part of the New York City subway system’s visual identity as its century-old …
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20 March 2011
The original, limited edition version of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System (Blue Pencil Editions, 2009) has been sold out since the end of February 2010. Neither I nor my colleague Abby Goldstein, the co-designer of the book, have any copies for sale. Those who are looking for the book should either try eBay or the various online used book sources. The other option is to buy the newly published revised edition of the book now available from …
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31 October 2010
Last February—with the assistance of Abby Goldstein and Jan Conradi—I organized Navigating the Labyrinth: Unimark International and the New York City Subway System for AIGA New York. The event was a sequel to my book on the history of Helvetica in the subway system and a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards manual designed by Massimo Vignelli of Unimark. The event, co-moderated by Jan and myself with a panel …
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13 December 2009
Blue Pencil is pleased to announce the first Blue Pencil Editions publication: Helvetica and the New York Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story. This is an updated, expanded, annotated and profusely illustrated version of the essay originally written by me for AIGA Voice in the fall of 2008. The book version takes into account new information and is supplemented by comprehensive notes, a bibliography and a chronology of the New York City subway system. Prof. Clifton Hood, author of 722 …
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