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Event

Salon

Salon Series 11: Type Specimen Ephemera

  • Date
  • Time
  • Led By Stephen Coles
  • Where Letterform Archive

Join us for our Salon Series, where Letterform Archive staff invite you to experience materials related to a specific topic of interest to the Collection.

Type specimens have become highly sought-after ephemera, not only among type and graphic designers, but all kinds of researchers and collectors of culture. The Archive is building one of the largest and most accessible collections of type specimens in the world. In 2015 we acquired the collection of the late Dutch publisher Jan Tholenaar, dramatically increasing our holdings of foundry publications, both bound catalogs and ephemera.

What makes type specimens so appealing? What do they tell us about the history of type marketing and production? How did they reshape graphic design and inform the use of specific typefaces? How are contemporary designers using and learning from them? Explore these topics and see first-hand some of the most striking and rare examples from the Archive collection.

You’ll also get a chance to take original type specimens home with you. We’ll be selling deaccessioned duplicates from the collection.

Doors at 6:00pm. Presentation begins promptly at 6:30pm.

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