Paul Shaw Letter Design

Detail of title for typographic calendar published by PM Typographers in 1984. Designed by Tony DiSpigna.

Palermo roman and italic typefaces cut by Giambattista Bodoni. From his 1788 Manuale Tipografico.

Detail from the Mausoleo Ossario Garibaldino (1941), a Fascist monument erected to honor the dead of the battles between 1849 and 1870 to liberate Rome from the control of the Papal States. Designed by Giovanni Jacobucci.

Detail from business card from John Baxter & Son, Edinburgh printers. An example of Artistic Printing (1893).

Detail from bauhaus dessau im gewerbemuseum basel exhibition poster (1929). Designed by Franz Ehrlich after a sketch by Joost Schmidt.

Blue Pencil

Blue Pencil is a “slog”: a slow blog. It does not get updated daily or even on a regular schedule. Instead, it gets updated when there is something of value to be posted. Postings often take a long time to prepare and appear at intervals of a few weeks or even months. Sometimes there is a flurry of postings within the span of a few days. Blue Pencil may be unpredictable in its frequency, but not in its purpose. Blue Pencil is fiercely dedicated to the 3Rs: research, reading and writing.

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21 August 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—Addendum 3: Unidentified Metal Script Type

Case containing two sizes (60 pt D and 48 pt D) of an unidentified script type in metal at the Tipoteca. Photograph by Paul Shaw 2025.
When the focus of the workshop pivoted from an exploration of Stocchetti 004–006 to a broader examination of roundhand scripts in type, it became essential to find a metal version for comparison to it and Rosaria 030–032, the other script wood type. Leonardo Facchin located a beautiful one in the Tipoteca’s collection labeled Graphic …
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22 July 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—Addendum 2: Rosaria 030–032

Since we did not plan to use a second script wood typeface for the workshop, we did not spend time exhaustively analyzing Rosaria 030–032. The fount was acquired by the Tipoteca from Rosaria Arti Grafiche in Palermo and occupies drawers numbered 030 to 032, hence the name I have given it. Its manufacturer and date of creation are unknown, though it is clearly not as old as Stocchetti 004–006. It appears to have been machine cut and lacks the sloped …
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20 July 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—2. Cornuda

June 10, 2025 | Day 2—Tipoteca
The morning walk to the Tipoteca from the Villa Bolzonello. Visible are Richard Ardagh, Riccardo De Franceschi, Yasmin Rodriguez, Breanna Parolini, Julian, Erin Roche, and Gabriella Miyares. The other participants rode bicycles. Photograph by Paul Shaw 2025.
Letterpress workshop with Richard Ardagh
This was the first day of the script wood type letterpress workshop at the Tipoteca that was the principal focus of the Letterforms Study Group. After a tour of the Tipoteca, led by Sandro Berra, …
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19 July 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—1. Milano

June 9, 2025 | Day 1—Archivio Bertarelli
Workshop with James Clough
This was the first official day of the Letterforms Study Group at Tipoteca tour and workshop. We were starting in Milano so that the participants could receive a grounding in Roundhand, the 18th century English script commonly referred to as Copperplate or wedding script which is the basis for the corsivo inglesi typefaces we would be studying at the Tipoteca. James Clough, an expatriate Englishman long resident in Milano, who has …
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19 July 2025

Letterforms Study Group: Corsivo Inglese in Caratteri—0. Milano

June 8, 2025 | Day 0—Castello Sforzesco
Orientation Day
Normally Orientation Day for Legacy of Letters or for the Letterforms Study Group abroad begins in the evening with a group meeting, followed by a convivial dinner. However, this year began in the afternoon with an optional visit to the Castello Sforzesco to see a small but rich exhibition titled Cataloghissimo: La comunicazione dei grandi magazzini. The exhibition had nothing to do with the theme of the study group, but the posters, …
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18 May 2025

More information on Nelson Cook, black stereotyper

Andrew W. Shurtz, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the School of Art at Louisiana State University has kindly called my attention to three obituaries about Nelson Cook. All of them are from African-American newspapers that have been digitized as part of the The California Digital Newspaper Collection. I am appending the complete text of all three below.

The Elevator 7 June 1873
Virginia City, June 3d, 1873.
Mr. Editor,—It becomes my painful duty to announce another one of those sad …
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7 May 2025

“Experimental No. 223, a newspaper typeface, designed by W.A. Dwiggins” by Gerard Unger

Nick Sherman has put online one of the best articles written about W.A. Dwiggins’ work as a type designer. It is “Experimental No. 223, a newspaper typeface, designed by W.A. Dwiggins” by Gerard Unger Quaerendo, vol. 11, no. 4, (Amsterdam 1981), pp. 302–324. The article is ostensibly a history of Exp. No. 223 (later known as Newsface or Hingham), one of several Dwiggins designs that was never released, but it is actually broader in scope. Not only does …
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8 January 2025

The First Black Typefounder in the United States?

Nelson Cook (c.1826–1873)
For several months I have been compiling a list of people employed in the type founding business in the United States in the 19th century. My primary resource for this project is digitized city directories. Many directories indicate the race—white or black—of city residents via either segregated listings or a code (e.g. colored, col’d, or c) attached to a name. In the 1845 New York directory (p. 85) published by John Doggett, Jr. there appears “Cook Nelson, (col’d) …
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25 November 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 3: Wood Type

First National Volunteers recruitment broadside (c.1863). Image courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
For most people wood type conjures up images of the Wild West, especially “Wanted” posters for outlaws. But such posters were a small part of the many broadsides printed with wood type in the 19th century. Broadsides for railroads, steamships, ferry services, theater and circus performances, Civil War recruitment, and political campaigns all utilized wood type because it was big, bold, and often decorative. Fat faces, Egyptians (slab …
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12 November 2024

Why you should join the Letterforms Study Group at the Tipoteca 2025—Reason no. 1: Script

The Letterforms Study Group workshop at the Tipoteca 2025 will take place from June 8 to June 15, 2025. It will focus on a rare example of wood type derived from script.
Script is a complex word. Like its German counterpart schrift, it has many meanings. To paleographers and calligraphers it denotes the writing styles found in hand written documents (logically called manuscripts from the Latin words manu “by hand” and scriptus “written” [past participle of the verb scribere “to …
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1 September 2024

Handsome Typos: An Improved (but Still Incomplete) History of Baltimore Type Foundries 1795–1895

Detail of front binding of Mengel’s Type-Foundry Specimens of Printing Types, Rules, Cuts, and Printing Material (Baltimore: John G. Mengel and Company, n.d. [1891]). Note that this is entirely lettered. Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
The standard account of the history of type foundries in Baltimore is Maurice Annenberg’s Type Foundries of America and Their Catalogs (1974). Annenberg lists four inter-related foundries (Baltimore Type Foundry, Chas. J. Cary & Co., John Ryan & Co. and John …
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28 August 2024

Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century Type Specimens

On August 8, 2024, I gave a talk at the Letterform Archive on Liberty Is Desirable: Nationalism, Patriotism, and Jingoism in 19th Century American Type Specimens. The video is now available at Vimeo.
Eight Line Pica Condensed from Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments Cast by Johnson & Smith (Philadelphia 1834). Image courtesy of Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A Note on the Title
The original title of this talk was Reading Type Specimens: From Cicero to Spoonie Diddel, Ladies …
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26 August 2024

Once and for all: Dwiggins did not invent the term ‘graphic design’.

“He [Dwiggins] was also a writer and design critic who was the first to use the term ‘graphic design,’ uniting various applied arts under one professional umbrella.”—Print editorial team
This statement accompanies an announcement of a second printing of Bruce Kennett’s biography of W.A. Dwiggins, originally published in 2018. That book was full of errors, among them the claim that Dwiggins coined the term “graphic design”. I have debunked that claim several times before on this website: 1 January …
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29 December 2023

The Definitive Dwiggins no. 722—“Mantegna” and Margaret B. Evans

Margaret B. Evans (1903–1986) was a compositor, printer, and book designer. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1927, and then did graduate study in the history of printing under George Parker Winship at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge. After that Evans went from studying printing in books to learning about it first hand with a two-year apprenticeship from 1929 to 1931 at The Printing House of William Edwin Rudge in Mount Vernon, New York. In 1931 she became the designer …
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8 August 2023

Type Specimens, Type Specimen and More Type Specimens—Letterforms Study Group in San Francisco August 21–23, 2023

There are still places available for these inexpensive special study sessions about type specimens led by Paul Shaw. Registration ends August 18. Scroll to the bottom for prices and payment options.
Page from a specimen of Grobe Kabel Kursiv by Rudolf Koch (Gebr. Klingspor 1930) reproduced in Type. A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles vol. 2 edited by Cees W. de Jong, Alston W. Purvis and Jan Tholenaar (Köln: Taschen, 2010).
About Type Specimens
At first glance type specimens are innocuous …
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10 June 2023

Letterforms Study Group in San Francisco—A Type and Type Specimen Trifecta August 21–23, 2023

The Letterforms Study Group is coming to San Francisco this summer. From August 21 to August 23, 2023 I will host three study sessions focused on type specimens. These are not lectures. They are participatory, collaborative investigations of physical items (books, periodicals, broadsides, etc.) which are linked thematically. My role in these events is to act as a facilitator and an informed guide rather than as an all-knowing authority.
Participants do not need to have prior familiarity with type design or …
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