Paul Shaw Letter Design

18 March 2022

Nachlass Jan Tschichold (Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig)

“Exhibition of new German Writing Art” (1920). Calligraphy by Johannes Tzschichhold [Jan Tschichold]. Image from Nachlass Jan Tschichold, Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig.
In October 2021 I stumbled on the digitized collection of Jan Tschichold’s work that was uploaded to the Deutsche National Bibliothek Leipzig website several months earlier. It is a remarkable collection. I was especially struck by finding a lot of Tschichold’s early calligraphic work, much of it in various forms of blackletter. That discovery led me to …
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2 March 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 1 [Foreword and Introduction]

Title page of One Hundred Books Famous in Typography (2021). The design is indebted to the title page for Janson: A Definitive Collection by Jack Stauffacher (see no. 72).
Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” while trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break …
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27 February 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 11 [notes on the images]

Notes on the images
In the previous Blue Pencil posts on One Hundred Books Famous in Typography my comments on each entry in the book included descriptions of the accompanying illustrations. I provided information that should have been in captions, suggested alternative choices, noted differences with the pages on display in the exhibition, and pointed out alterations to the original image. It is this latter point that I wish to discuss here.
If my eye is correct—and I may be wrong on …
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23 February 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 10 [Further Reading, etc.]

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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19 February 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 9 [Fifty Typefaces Famous in Typography]

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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17 February 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 8 [Brave New World] nos. 86–100

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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28 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 7 [Modern Masters] nos. 68–85

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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24 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 6 [The Machine Age] nos. 54–67

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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23 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 5 [Looking Back] nos. 36–53

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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17 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 4 [The Age of Reason] nos. 20–35

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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16 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 2 [In the Beginning] nos. 1–9

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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16 January 2022

Blue Pencil no. 48—One Hundred Books Famous in Typography, Part 3 [The First Golden Age] nos. 10–19

Note: When I began this dissection it was intended as a single post—even as it grew much longer than expected. However, I was forced to break it up into smaller chunks when I ran into an unexplained “failure error” when trying to save the draft one day. Rather than try to break up the dissection into equally sized posts based on word counts, I decided instead to make separate posts based on the divisions used in the Grolier Club exhibition …
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6 November 2021

Blue Pencil no. 56—Creative Typography

Creative Type: A Sourcebook of Classic and Contemporary Letterforms by Alston Purvis, Cees de Jong, and Friedrich Friedl (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2005)
This is not a full Blue Pencil dissection. It is based solely on the portions of Creative Type available as a Google Books preview online. The preview includes the front cover, pp. 268, 276, 279–280, 282–291, 294–295, 297, 299–304, 306–310, 313–320, 322–323, 326–327, 329–333, 335, 338, 340, 342–345, 347, 349–351, 353–355, 357–359, 362–364, …
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9 October 2021

One Hundred [sic] Books [sic] Famous [sic] in [Western] Typography [sic]—A Critique

One Hundred Books Famous in Typography by Jerry Kelly (New York: The Grolier Club, 2021)
This book, with a foreword by Sebastian Carter, accompanies an exhibition held at the Grolier Club from May 12 to July 31, 2021.* The exhibition has been touted by Kelly and the Grolier Club as the seventh in an ongoing series of exhibitions based on the concept of “one hundred books famous in [fill in the blank]”. The first of these, “One Hundred Books Famous in …
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31 August 2021

100 Hundred Books Famous in Typography (the exhibition)—The perspective of a specialist

100 Hundred Books Famous in Typography
The Grolier Club
May 12–July 31, 2021
curated by Jerry Kelly
The Grolier Club is a private club, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, devoted to the collecting of books and their appreciation as material artifacts. It regularly hosts exhibitions of books (and sometimes other items like magazines) derived from its members’ collecting passions and, on occasion, traveling exhibitions from libraries and other institutions. To its credit, these exhibitions are not only open to …
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28 August 2021

Blue Pencil no. 49—Melure

This is the complete text that appears below the heading “Melior (all sizes—see Melure)” in a 1965 specimen book or advertisement from Headliners. I have copied it from the WRU+1 PDF supplied to me by Nikolaus Weichelsbaumer.
We call it Melure.
Now you can specify Melior to fit areas, not just lines.
Now you can get all sizes in five different weights, three proportions, matching italics and open face.
Now you can keep the clean, precise look of Melior in tight display headings.
For Melure …
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