Paul Shaw Letter Design » Tours & Events

9 February 2013

Bastard Calligraphy: a workshop

I will be doing a workshop on bâtarde, otherwise known as bastarda, a calligraphic hand that emerged from medieval documents to become a formal style for Books of Hours in northern France, Burgundia and Flanders in the second half of the 15th century. The class will take place over the course of two consecutive Sundays, April 28 and May 5, and is being sponsored by the Society of Scribes, Ltd., the calligraphic society in the New York City metropolitan region. …
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9 February 2013

Los Angeles Lettering Walk

I am leading a lettering walk of Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, March 2 from 10 am to 1 pm. It will be a reprise of one that I did during TypeCon 2010. The walk will take in the usual range of urban lettering sights—carved inscriptions, metal letters, painted signs, plastic signs, vinyl signs, terrazzo letters, vernacular writing, grafﬁti (maybe)—but most of all we will see lots of neon signs, both active and dead.
Dancing Girls (detail) neon sign.
To register …
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2 February 2013

“Grab life by the typographic tail!”

There is still time to sign up for the 2013 Legacy of Letters Tour & Workshop at the early bird discounted price. Join Alta Price and me in Italy this summer and see how much fun you can have with letters. It is the experience of a lifetime.
Paul Shaw
Alexander practicing Cyrillic calligraphy.
“This ten-day immersion in the world of Latin letterforms, in their native environment, was an unforgettable experience. It was such an amazing time, filled with lots of …
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7 January 2013

The Lettermaniac or Literaphiliac Proﬁled: A Day with Alexandra Horowitz

On Looking: Eleven Walks with Experts. Jacket design by Tal Goretsky.
Alexandra Horowitz, Professor of Psychology at Barnard College (Columbia University) and author of Inside of a Dog (a no. 1 New York Times bestseller) has just written On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes (Scribner). One of the eleven “experts” is me, a literaphiliac—someone suffering from a malady that “makes one seek, and see, letters”—in Horowitz’s view. Guilty as charged, though I would have used the term lettermaniac. Anyway, I …
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19 December 2012

Designing with Letters

In January I will be traveling to the Midwest to teach, ﬁrst in Bloomington, Indiana and then in Chicago. The workshop at the School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, organized by Paul Brown and Tom Walker, is not yet determined. However, the workshops in Chicago have already been announced. They will both be on the topic of Designing with Letters. The Society of Typographic Arts, in conjunction with the School of Media Arts, Columbia College Chicago, is hosting a one-day …
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3 December 2012

Legacy of Letters Tour and Workshop 2013

Legacy of Letters participants at Il Buon Tempo, Lucio Passerini’s letterpress studio in Milano
Alta Price and I have decided not to wait until 2014 as originally announced to reprise our Legacy of Letters Tour and Workshop but to go ahead with one in 2013. We have been spurred to this decision by the urgings of colleagues in Italy and the wonderful time we had in 2012. (See Imprint for just one aspect of the 2012 tour …
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22 November 2012

Typo-Pizza in New Haven

On Saturday, November 17 a small group of New York area lettering enthusiasts ﬁnally made their way to New Haven to see Yale University’s lettering delights. It was a trip that had been planned in the summer and cancelled twice due to inclement weather. The idea for the trip was sparked by an article on lettering at Yale written by Reed Reibstein for an upcoming issue of Codex. The trip was co-led by Reed and myself with Nick Sherman (Mr. …
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18 October 2012

Walking tour of The Loop in Chicago on October 10, 2012

Magnificent Mile and The Loop, Chicago
Wednesday, October 10
4 pm to 6 pm
students $10
professionals $20
sponsored jointly by AIGA Chicago and the STA
Chicago is one of the world’s great urban centers, noted for its rich array of excellent architecture spanning over a century. This makes it also one of the best places to see a wide variety of lettering, especially in the heart of the city: The Loop. I will lead a walk down the Magnificent Mile, across the River and around …
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11 October 2012

Walking Tour of Chicago: an update

The lettering tour of the Magnificent Mile and The loop in Chicago was sold out within two hours, before I could even properly post an announcement of it. The tour itself was equally a success. We met at the Chicago Water Tower (William W. Boyington, 1869) and, after a brief look at the Fourth Presbyterian Church (Ralph Adams Cram, 1914), walked south along Michigan Avenue to The Loop, stopping to discuss the Allerton …
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20 September 2012

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System short-listed

Great news! MIT Press has given me advance notice that Helvetica and the New York City Subway System has been shortlisted for The Art Book Prize (formerly the Banister Fletcher Prize), which is administered by the Authors’ Club in London. The shortlist of eight titles will be formally announced at the opening of The London Art Book Fair this Thursday evening, September 20th, at The Whitechapel Gallery. The winner will be announced later this year at a reception in late November.

18 September 2012

APHA Conference 2012 Talk

Inland Printer (July 1901). Cover design by Frederic W. Goudy (border and masthead) and W.A. Dwiggins (illustration)
At the Crossroads: Living Letterform Traditions
2012 American Printing History Conference
Columbia College Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts
October 12–13, 2012
I will be speaking at this year’s APHA Conference in Chicago (as part of Panel One between 9:45 am and 11 am on Saturday, October 13) on “The Roots of the Big Three: Goudy, Cooper, Dwiggins and the Frank Holme School of Illustration”. My talk is only …
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11 June 2012

Gorey, Huerta and Di Spigna

For New York lettering enthusiasts or those who will be visiting the city this summer there are two unheralded exhibitions that are a must-see. The first is “Gorey Preserved” at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Butler Library, 6th floor, 114th Street and Broadway). It is on display until July 27. The other is “The Tony & Gerry Show” at Pratt Manhattan, GradComD Exhibition Space (144 West 14th Street, 7th floor). It ends August 9.Edward Gorey …
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11 June 2012

Shave and a Haircut: 2012 SEGD Conference: The Bridge

Barber Shop, Crown Heights (Brooklyn) (2007)Last week (June 7–9) the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) held its annual conference in New York City. For the final session on Friday, June 8 of the 2012 SEGD Conference: The Bridge Anna Sharp and her colleagues at the New York design firm Two Twelve put together a short interstitial slide show of lettering in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Their goal was to “depict the diversity of cultures, essence of the …
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25 May 2012

Woodhaven and Richmond Hill Walking Tour on June 10, 2012

Wood-Rich Color, Woodhaven, Queens (2008)
Woodhaven and Richmond Hill
Sunday, June 10
11 am to 2 pm
$25
$15 for SEGD 212 Conference attendees
The next lettering tour of New York will be of the adjoining neighborhoods of Woodhaven and Richmond Hill in Queens, accessible via the elevated J train. Both have solid business areas with good examples of pre-digital commercial lettering: paint shops, jewelers, candy stores, beauty salons and pet shops. There is also the usual institutional lettering to be found in New …
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17 May 2012

Special Three-day Lettering and Type Intensive

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 …
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28 March 2012

Type Americana 2

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 …
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