About Us

Dr. Sahar Afshar, Lead Instructor for Type West Online (she/her), is an independent type designer and researcher based in London. She holds a PhD in Printing History from Birmingham City University, and is part of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Printing History and Culture. She divides her time between her practice as a type designer with over a decade of experience in working on various retail and custom fonts, and her research, which investigates the technological, cultural, and political dimensions of typography and printing. When she is not drawing letterforms, she teaches type, writes about type, talks about type, and indulges in hobbies that have nothing at all to do with type.

Sara Allen, Membership and Development Manager (they/she), wrote her first grant by collaborating with a community leader on a chicken coop. Since then, she has been writing and managing grants at nonprofits and philanthropic foundations. Traveling to Mexico City was a catalyst in her commitment to supporting equitable access to museums and reinvigorated her personal love of art and murals. She believes in the importance of accessible archives, the role of museums as community learning spaces, and the transformational power of art. With her background in fundraising and connecting people’s passions, she is building out the Archive’s membership and fundraising program.

Khoo Zi Yun (Geraldine) Ang, Editorial Assistant, Letterform Archive Books (she/her), has far too many letters in her name(s), but is always hungry for more. A fervent lover of both the stories they can tell and the aesthetics they can shape, she is blissfully exploring their intersections here at the Archive. She received her BA in Art History from UC Berkeley with high honors and the Departmental Citation in 2024. Her current favorite art pieces are Haegue Yang’s Towel Light Sculptures. Aside from words and art, she also loves her mother’s extra-spicy prawn noodles, zombie movies, and pretending that graduate school application deadlines are nonexistent.

Thomas Bollier, Production Manager (he/him) has been producing high-quality illustrated publications for over 10 years. He got his start at Aperture Foundation, printing photography books, then managed print production for  The California Sunday Magazine, which won a series awards over its six-year run. Since 2020, Tom has worked independently as a photo retoucher, photographic printer, and print production manager. He has traveled to Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Spain, Turkey and within the U.S.A. for printing press checks, and may add more countries to the list in his work for the Archive’s publishing program.

Elise Carlton, Graphic Designer & Social Media Manager (she/her), brings to Letterform Archive a passion for typography and print production informed by her training and experience as a graphic designer. She earned her BA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara before returning to school in Los Angeles for a BS in Graphic Design. She produced award-winning brand identity and package design at a small agency in Venice, California before joining Letterform Archive, where she shares the collection on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Alice Chau, Art Director, Letterform Archive Books (she/her), has been designing books for cultural orgs, trade, and indie presses since 2006, after receiving a BFA from Art Center College of Design and landing a design fellowship at Chronicle Books. In 2018, she completed a summer intensive at TypeParis. She is thrilled to combine her two passions of book and type design while surrounded by the Archive’s collection, and looks forward to expand the publishing program and audience. When not designing, she can be found eating and taking pictures of food and type.

Stephen “Stewf” Coles, Associate Curator & Editorial Director (he/him), joined the staff after serving on our Board of Directors since its inception. For over 20 years, he has been active in the type community, initially as a creative director at FontShop, and later as an independent consultant, connecting font makers with font users. Stephen wrote the book The Anatomy of Type and co-founded the influential websites Typographica and Fonts In Use. With his background in design and journalism, combined with an obsession for type history, Stephen is responsible for the online face and voice of the Archive, and shares the collection through the blog and other editorial projects. As a member of the curatorial team, he helps to shape the future of the collection. Stephen co-curated the Strikethrough exhibition.

Jen Dao, Exhibitions Manager (she/her/they), is a designer and curator born and raised in the Bay Area. After receiving a BA in Design from UC Davis, she had a brief stint teaching English in Taiwan before finding herself back into the arts scene at the Triton Museum. A “Jen-of-all-trades,” she believes in the power and magic of visual storytelling, and is excited to bring her unlimited enthusiasm to the exhibitions program at the Archive. In her spare time, Jen loves cuddling her cat, tending to her plants, exploring the Bay Area’s diverse food scene, handwriting snail mail and reading manga.

Maria Doreuli, Lead Instructor for Type West In-Person (she/her), earned masters degrees at the Moscow State University of Printing and the TypeMedia course at The Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Her type has won numerous awards, including honors from the Type Directors Club and Morisawa. For several years she has run type design and lettering workshops in Russia and in 2014 she founded the Contrast Foundry in Moscow. Maria joins the full-year Type West faculty after serving as an instructor in 2021–2022.

Mikhail Ganesh, Collections Programming Associate (they/them), is a Tamil artist from Bengal who received their BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts. Their creative practice fully engages the body and space through printmaking, spacial installation, and performance. Their work lies at the intersections between language and presentation, queerness and femininity, familiarity and loss. Mikhail loves connecting our community to creators through in-person public programming.

sair goetz, Collections Programming Manager and Data Associate (they/them), received their MFA from Ohio State University and the Dedalus Foundation Award in 2017 and their BA in Visual and Media Studies, Arts of the Moving Image, and Documentary Studies from Duke University in 2011. In their personal art practice, sair uses text, performance, video, sticky-notes, and humor to develop queer speculative fictions. They eat lemons like apples and savor the fact that LMN is at the center of the latin alphabet. sair manages the Archive’s online programming, including virtual tours and salons, as well as our docent program.

Mike Hager, Senior Accountant (he/him)

Jada Haynes, Collections Associate (they/them), is a Black non-binary multidisciplinary artist, designer, and storyteller. They received BAs in both Art Studio and Design at the University of California, Davis where they were the Lead Director of the student run art space, The Basement Gallery. Their creative practice is based in identity, memory, and ambiguous loss, which fuses with their hands-on work at Letterform Archive — organizing, processing, and housing the collection. They are passionate about how objects and experiences of the past are inextricably linked to creative work of the present.

Kate Long Stellar, Librarian (she/her), has a profound interest in book arts, typography, concrete poetry, and graffiti. She also gained an appreciation for 20th-century graphic design while at the award-winning studio, Office. Kate earned her MLIS through Drexel University, which serves her well as she helps to preserve and catalog the collection, while making it accessible to our community. Kate leads the collections department, helped launch our Online Archive, and serves on the Archive’s curatorial team. She relishes helping people access the things that interest them.

Grendl Löfkvist, Dean of Type West (she/her), teaches type history and theory in the Type West program. Outside the Archive, Grendl teaches the history of graphic design, book arts, typography, and letterpress printing at City College of San Francisco, as well as calligraphy at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Grendl has ink in her veins: she was an offset press operator for 20 years; and she serves on the board of directors for the American Printing History Association’s Northern California chapter. Her interests include the study of printing as a subversive “Black Art” and she’s always on the lookout for bizarre or macabre print, type, and lettering lore (she is a bit of a goth).

Ellis Martin, Digitization Archivist (he/him) works in the interstices of data, art, and archives. He earned his master’s in information management and systems from UC Berkeley. He co-edited the Lambda Literary award-winning We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (Nightboat Books, 2019). At the Archive, Ellis images the collection and coordinates rights and reproduction requests. His favorite type of sky to paint is the mackerel sky.

Lucie Parker, Publisher, Letterform Archive Books (she/her), made her first book when she was three years old, and — 200-plus titles later — she shows no sign of letting up. With nearly 15 years’ experience crafting best-selling books for the trade and gift markets, Lucie specializes in producing high-end, design-driven books, often in collaboration with museums — such as the Exploratorium and the Walt Disney Family Museum — and magazines, such as Popular Science. Lucie was formerly a senior editor at Weldon Owen Publishing, where she developed more than 20 art, lifestyle, and technology titles a year. We are thrilled to have her expertise and enthusiasm as we ramp up the Archive’s publishing program.

Katie Peeler Ranahan, Marketing and Communications Manager (she/her), enjoys being a connector and seeing the direct impact of the Archive on the public. She grew up intrigued by the combination of art and history, thanks in part to a mother who dragged her to museums and insisted she read all the captions. After majoring in Art History and minoring in PR and Advertising, she spent 10 years raising the visibility of cultural organizations like the American Dance Festival and California Historical Society. She is thrilled to be doing the same for the Archive, gaining a deep knowledge about the collection and then getting other folks excited about it.

Laura Romanosky, Deputy Director (she/her), has a passion for nonprofit leadership that has spanned many sectors of the education world, ranging from K–12 to experiential learning. She holds a Masters in Teaching, a Masters in Public Administration from NYU, and received her Project Management Professional certification in 2020 (a pandemic project). At the Archive, she sits at the intersection of finance and human resources, driving sustainability practices across the organization’s resources to ensure the Archive is here for generations to come.

Rob Saunders, Executive Director and Curator, (he/him), is a designer, teacher, publisher, and management consultant, who has collected graphic design and letterforms for over 40 years. Rob began his career teaching at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, while serving freelance clients and agencies, before founding a book publishing enterprise that included Alphabet Press (graphic design), Picture Book Studio (children’s books), and Rabbit Ears Books (book/audio packages), which was eventually acquired by Simon & Schuster. Prior to founding Letterform Archive he served as a creative and marketing consultant with clients in the hospitality, technology, and financial industries.

Eve Scarborough, Digitization Associate (she/her), is a writer and book artist. Her work explores the tension between structure and content, memory and language loss, and information decay as it relates to archives. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mills College with a minor in Book Art. Presently, Eve assists with ongoing systematic digitization, imaging ephemera, process work, and more. Her favorite tool is her orange 30-60-90 drafting triangle.

Jon Sueda, Associate Curator of Exhibitions (he/him), Originally from Hawaii, Jon has practiced design everywhere from Honolulu to Holland. After earning his MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts, and an internship at Studio Dumbar, Sueda founded the design studio Stripe, specializing in print and exhibition design for art and culture. Jon was Director of Design at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts for seven years, is currently Chair of the MFA Design program at California College of the Arts, and was recently selected as an AGI member. He brings his extensive graphic design, curation, and education experience to develop and run our exhibition program.

Molly O’Neil Stewart, Associate Managing Editor, Letterform Archive Books (she/her), can’t bear getting rid of a pretty piece of paper. She studied creative writing at UC Santa Cruz and began working as an editor after moving to San Francisco in 2009, where her immersion in the world of illustrated books began as Managing Editorial Intern at Chronicle Books, and then Associate Lifestyles Editor at Weldon Owen, where she nurtured titles on science, interior design, animation, and more. Her work with textiles, ceramics, and other arts have also made her a geek for design, so she’s right at home building beautiful books that share the Archive’s collection.

Chris Westcott, Editor, Letterform Archive Books (they/he), took to design in high school and college, working by moonlight on web and print projects while studying widely in the humanities. Chris’s research life led from Columbia University to a Ph.D. in English at Johns Hopkins, where Chris taught courses in writing, literature, and social thought. With publishing experience at Verso and the University of Chicago Press, and with a restless interest in books that reveal new prospects and help us tell richer stories, Chris is excited to see future Archive titles into print.

Nicolette (Nikki) Yaffe, Administrative Assistant (they/she) grew up in San Francisco and attended Mills College where they studied sociology and book arts. That combo shines in their passion for building community around a space that values niche art forms as much as they do. Nikki is often the Archive’s first point of contact, via email or in the gallery, making sure everyone feels welcome. Their off hours are full of musicmaking, bookmaking, printmaking, and crocheting hats for their cat Shoop.

Priscilla (Skilla) Zaccalini, Education & Events Manager (she/her), has over thirty years of administrative and event planning experience, and brings to Letterform Archive her unique flair for organization and fun. In her spare time, she enjoys dancing to funky music, making collage art, writing and filming stories about the Ethereal Universe, and experimenting with making music to express her joy for life. She believes everyone is an artist.

Paola Zanol, Collections and Preservation Manager (she/her), joined the staff after volunteering for over a year. She was raised in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, by a mother who steeped her in sustainable product design, fashion design, and tridimensional expression. After earning a BA in Fine Arts, she rediscovered her love of letters and sought out a design education at San Francisco City College, where she earned certificates in Visual Media Design, Web Foundation, Illustration, and Digital Media. Among Paola’s many talents are flamenco dancing and Afro-Brazilian percussion.