Paul Shaw Letter Design

Special Three-day Lettering and Type Intensive

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:51:48 +0000

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 the rest of the tour.

On Day 1, participants will have the opportunity to explore non-traditional tools (brushes, markers, ruling pens, litho/cola pens, etc.) to create expressive, contemporary, and experimental calligraphy with calligraphic maestro Luca Barcellona and letter designer Paul Shaw.

Days 2 and 3 will focus on type, as Milanese master printer Lucio Passerini shows participants how to set type with the composing stick and then introduces printing with the Vandercook proof press. Participants will be able to design their own broadsides or ephemera using the renowned wood type collection of the Tipoteca as well as Monotype and foundry type. They will be encouraged to integrate type with written or the hand-drawn letters learned previously in the session with Luca Barcellona and Paul Shaw.

The workshop will take place at the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione in Cornuda, Italy, a small town in the Veneto. The Tipoteca, established in 1995 (and opened to the public in 2002) is a museum of printing and type. It has an outstanding collection of printing presses, Linotype and Monotype casting machines, pantographs, type casters, papercutters and other equipment along with cases of foundry type, drawers of wood type, and a library of type specimen books and printing trade literature. Much of the type and the literature is Italian and thus will be unfamiliar to those with experience in typography and letterpress printing.

Registration: $1100 (includes three-day workshop, basic art supplies, four nights’ hotel accommodation, all breakfasts, and one celebratory group dinner with all Legacy of Letters participants and instructors). Travel to and from Cornuda, home of the Tipoteca, is not included, although we can provide directions and travel suggestions for participants coming from elsewhere in Italy, Europe or abroad.

Participants are asked to arrive the evening of Tuesday, 24 July (this night before the workshop begins is included in workshop price) and depart the morning of Saturday, 28 July.

To sign up (or for more information) email Paul Shaw at paulshaw@nyc.rr.com. Registration ends June 15.

Type Americana 2

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:41:53 +0000

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; Frank Brannon, Jr. on type and the Cherokee language; Nancy Sharon Collins on engraving and its relationship to type; and myself on Oswald Cooper, lettering genius and designer of the eponymous Cooper Black. A panel of Richard Kegler of P22, Steve Matteson of Monotype Imaging and Thom Phinney of Extensis will discuss the revival of vintage American typefaces. And finally, there will be two workshops: one on wood engraving and iron handpress printing led by Carl Montford and one on lettering conducted by Sumner Stone. To learn more about Type Americana 2 and to sign up for this fun and informative weekend go to the conference website. Or call 206 / 623-1560. There are discounts for AIGA members and students.

“All advertising is read by tired people”; handlettered advertisement by Oswald Cooper for Cooper Black

Type Americana, the brainchild of Juliet Shen, was first held in 2010 with talks on Linn Boyd Benton by Patricia Cost, Morris Fuller Benton by Shen, American Type Founders by Thomas Phinney, Frederic W. and Bertha Goudy by Steve Matteson, W.A. Dwiggins by myself, Shelley Gruendler on Beatrice Warde, and Sumner Stone on the early days at Adobe. Stone led a lettering workshop and the brothers Moran (Bill and Jim) oversaw a tremendously enjoyable wood type printing workshop.

TDC Queens Walking Tour

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:58:22 +0000

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 pub lettering, public and parochial schools inscriptions, Catholic church inscriptions, botanica signs, Italian bakery signs, names of pre-war apartment buildings, possibly gravestones in a cemetery, and certainly many non-Latin scripts. As always, it will be a unique experience.

To sign up go to tdc.org

Blue Pencil no. 19—Helvetica and the New York City Subway System

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:06:13 +0000

New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual p. 45 “Color-coding 1 11/16" discs”

Wade Penner recently wrote to point out that, “the order of the discs on the cover [of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System] does not match the 1970 Graphic Standards manual [sic], alphabetically GG comes before HH.” He is absolutely right and I am surprised that no one has brought this to my attention before. But even more surprising is that no one has commented on the “wrong” colors used on the cover.

Abby Goldstein and I semi-invented the cover. We recreated the layout of the various subway line discs based on p. 45 of the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual (1970). However, with the exception of pages showing the individual discs, the manual is printed entirely in black-and-white. Thus, we had to add the appropriate Pantone colors to the layout. The colors are those that were in operation in 1970. They differ markedly from those in use today. This is what I expected readers to notice immediately. I thought someone would wonder why the no. 5 wasn’t green. As it turns out, the no. 5 was black (as was the B and the QJ) which forced us to change it to gray for the cover design so that it would show up against the black background. In the midst of debating and testing the colors we overlooked the transposition of the GG and HH lines. Whoops!

Last fall Tom Rinaldi sent me this wonderful 1970 advertisement from Signs of the Times magazine about Helvetica.

“Helvetica for the discriminating” advertisement, Signs of the Times (August 1970)

Injection molded plastic and Styrofoam letters is one way that Helvetica became ubiquitous in the
1970s. This advertisement is the earliest one I know of for Helvetica in the sign industry. If
anyone ﬁnds an earlier one please let me know.

Also, last fall Peter Lloyd, who is working on a history of New York City subway maps, visited the new Vignelli Center for Design Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology and discovered some relevant signage material which he passed on to me. Among his ﬁnds was a 1971 document entitled the “DeKalb Av Manual” [there is no title page just “DeKalb Av” on the ﬁrst page] which provides detailed instructions on how to implement the signage system outlined in the 1970 Graphics Standards Manual. It also includes a System Map, a Neighborhood Map and a Directory from Grand Central that was intended to help riders ﬁgure out how to get from one station in the system to another. Unfortunately, none of these items was ever actually installed at the time. In the 1980s a different Neighborhood Map, designed by Michael Hertz Associates, was introduced. The “DeKalb Av Manual” was created by Joan Charysyn and Virginia Macintosh of Unimark International. Here are a few pages from it.

DeKalb Av Manual (1971), p. 5

DeKalb Av Manual (1971), p. 10

DeKalb Av Manual (1971), p. 10 System Map

DeKalb Av Manual (1971), p. 15 Neighborhood Map

Note that all of the signage is in Standard—not Helvetica. However, Helvetica was used on the System and Neighborhood Maps, an indication that they were linked to the famous 1972 NYCTA system map that was then in progress (with Charysyn playing an instrumental role in its design and implementation). I do not know if the System Map’s outlined route lines were an interim design stage or something done to make the map functional in a black-and-white document. But I am sure that Peter Lloyd will have the answer when his book ﬁnally comes out.

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System in New Paltz

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:05:03 +0000

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 also take a trip up the beautiful Hudson Valley. The talk went well and afterwards I ended up doing both an impromptu crit and a quick lecture on Renaissance lettering and its origins for the students in Arthur’s typography class. It was a sunny jam-packed day in New Paltz.

Bushwick / East Williamsburg and Tribeca Lettering Walks

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:11:44 +0000

This spring I organized two custom urban lettering tours in New York City. On March 4, at the behest of Troy Leinster, I led alumni of the summer (short-term) CooperType program on walk through Bushwick and East Williamsburg. Two days later I was supposed to lead a group of students from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota on a walk in Tribeca. Due to some confusion they were unable to make it, but several of the CooperType alumni eagerly took their place.

The Bushwick / East Williamsburg tour was, as expected, full of an amazing array of lettering, including some things I had not seen before. These two adjoining neighborhoods are some of the richest lettering-wise remaining in New York since they still have a large number of industrial businesses and have not been heavily gentriﬁed yet. Here are two examples of lettering, one institutional (from Bushwick) and the other vernacular (from East Williamsburg) that we encountered during the tour.

New York Public School 116 (Bushwick)

Public School 116 is now the Elizabeth Farrell School. The original lettering is a wonderful mix of slab serif and tuscan serif while the new lettering is a crabbed, barely visible and undistinguished typeface. Setting it in an arc to mirror the lunette over the front door does nothing to improve it.

No Parking (East Williamsburg)

I have been documenting No Parking signs for several years ago, spurred on originally by Liz DeLuna. Given their amazing variety, I intend to make a book of such signs. This one on a construction fence is among the best and most inventive of them. Ben Shahn would have loved it. I assume that it was made using masking tape. The presence of the dull store-bought No Parking sign above it adds to its beauty.

The Tribeca walk was supposed to be a repeat since two past TDC walks included Tribeca. But in the end, the walk deviated from the initial plan and we discovered things that I had missed during my wanderings in the neighborhood. (This is a common occurrence on the lettering tours since New York is not only rich in environmental lettering, but it is also constantly evolving. It is easy to overlook some lettering. And, while old signs continually vanish—much to our dismay—there are often new ones worthy of attention.) Here are two examples of signs in Tribeca that I was previously aware of, but had not included in the preliminary tour itinerary. They are both typical of this former warehouse district.

Port Warehouses (Tribeca)

The Port Warehouses apparently contained canned goods and dry goods. See the Tribeca North Historic District report (1992) for more on the warehouse buildings in the neighborhood and the background of the American Express Co. building as well. The latter was a stable, a reminder that the credit card company got its start as an express mail and shipping goods company.

American Express Co. (Tribeca)

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System passes a milestone

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:30:44 +0000

When The MIT Press offered to republish Helvetica and the New York City Subway System they initially planned a print run of 3000 copies. While it was far more than the modest 500 copies that Blue Pencil Editions did originally, it was a standard quantity for design titles. But The MIT Press quickly changed their minds and, to my astonishment, upped the figure to 5000 copies. Their faith in the book, especially that of their executive editor Roger Conover, has been amply rewarded as the second edition—officially published less than a year ago—sold out early in January and the book has already gone into a second printing. The quantity is small potatoes compared to the number of copies sold by Stephen King, J.K. Rowling or even Malcolm Gladwell. But for a design book the sales are gratifying.

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System has just garnered more praise. Under the title “The Commuting Type”, Joshua J. Friedman has written a positive review of the book for the Winter 2011–2012 issue of Columbia Magazine. “While Shaw painstakingly catalogs the evolution of the transit authority’s graphics standards manual and canvasses the world’s transit design schemes of the 1960s,” he writes, “the reader can happily float above the text and enjoy photographs of early-century [sic] mosaic signs, bygone graffiti-strewn interiors of subway cars and stations, and archival maps and documents.”

New praise for Helvetica and the New York City Subway

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System has been awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2011 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the Architecture & Urban Planning category by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over forty categories. Judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals since 1976, the awards are extraordinary for their breadth and depth. Blue Pencil is gratified that the AAP has honored Helvetica and the New York City Subway. It is further evidence that the book continues to resonate beyond the narrow conﬁnes of the graphic design profession.

Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2011—Cala by Dieter Hofrichter

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:35:39 +0000

Typographica recently announced their list of the best typefaces of 2011. Stephen Coles invited me to be one of the critics and—from the list of typefaces he offered me—I chose Cala by Dieter Hofrichter to discuss. There were a number of typefaces on the list that appealed to me, including several by Hofrichter. In the end I selected Cala because 1. it was a Venetian Oldstyle face, an historically important category of type that has been on the wane since the heyday of William Morris; and 2. it was an OpenType face that was not burdened by an excess of unnecessary glyphs. For the full review go to the Typographica website. And while you’re there, enjoy the other typefaces chosen as the best of 2011. It was a good year.

Codex

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:10:45 +0000

I am excited to announce that John Boardley, publisher of the popular website ilovetypography, has asked me to serve as editor of the second issue of his print publication Codex.

Codex: The Journal of Typography (Issue 1, Spring 2011). Front cover.

For those unaware of Codex, its debut issue, published in spring 2011, contains a wonderful mix of material, both high and low, scholarly and popular: a review of the typeface Huronia, a paean to Ottmar Mergenthaler and the Linotype, an interview with type designers Christian Schwartz and Paul Barnes, a proﬁle of Milanese calligrapher Luca Barcellona, an historical survey of early printed initials, a tribute to Renaissance printer Erhard Ratdolt, the story behind Craig Eliason’s Ambicase font, my review of three books by Dutch type historian Hendrik Vervliet, a look at Emil Ruder’s typography, and much more. So far it is a worthy successor to legendary type magazines Alphabet, Motif, and Typographica. Because Boardley was willing to run long, scholarly articles as well as short, punchy ones, the quality of its content surpasses that of Baseline and Eye. Visually, Codex is beautifully designed and printed, though it falls shy of the standard set in that regard by Hans Dieter Reichert at Baseline.

What is exciting about Codex is that it is running against the current wisdom that print is dead. Boardley is using the success of his website to propel the readership of “dead trees”. It is a strategy that I wholeheartedly agree with: use the web for short, immediate articles and news and use print for material that is longer, more in depth and likely to endure. I sincerely hope that Codex 2 maintains the quality and momentum of its ﬁrst issue.