Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 9: Collaborative Group Project

Stefano Baldasari and Jen Thomas adjust the type in the bed of the press during Legacy of Letters 2023. Photograph by Paul Shaw.

Participants in every Legacy of Letters workshop since 2012 have collaborated on a group project. Day-by-day details of those for 2019, 2022 and 2023 can be seen online. The Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025 will also involve a collaborative group project: researching, photographing, designing, typesetting, and printing a specimen book chronicling a rare formal script wood type fount in the collection of the Tipoteca. The tasks involved in researching and documenting the script wood type will be divided up. Everyone will set metal type for captions as well as large specimens of the script wood type. Everyone will print pages of the specimen.

The workshop is being limited to a maximum of eight people in order to make the collaboration smoother and more enjoyable. Unlike the Legacy of letters group projects there will be no established parameters for the project prior to the beginning of the workshop. Once we are all assembled at the Tipoteca we will collectively figure out what size the specimen should be, how many pages it will have, whether or not there will be inserts or fold-outs, what typeface(s) will be used for the captions and ancillary matter, the manner in which the script typeface will be shown, what colors will be used, as well as other design and production decisions. The only limitations on the the design of the specimen will be those imposed by the physical nature of the printing presses used, the paper available, and the condition of the script wood type itself.

This workshop will be entirely hand-on and very participatory.

Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025
The workshop will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. Participation in the workshop is limited to eight people. To secure a place a non-refundable deposit of $300 is required. Please make payment to paulshaw@nyc.rr.com via PayPal. If this is not possible, please contact Paul Shaw at paulshaw@nyc.rr.com for alternative methods of payment. A downloadable registration form is available below.

Tipoteca 2025 registration form

Maureen Hoffman and Patricia Vining help Diana Pasovski (left) revise her composition during Legacy of Letters 2012. Photograph by Paul Shaw.