Category: Behind the Scenes

For most of Letterform Archive’s existence, one woman has been behind our camera, capturing and sharing the collection for publications, research requests, and social media.

Camille Brown joined the Archive in May 2016 as an intern, and soon took a place on staff as Photographer. Her deft shooting and post-processing skills made large and demanding projects – like the Dwiggins book – possible. And her keen and curious eye set the standard for our social feeds, attracting tens of thousands followers on Facebook, Twitter, and especially Instagram. Now we bid Camille a tearful farewell as she leaves us for her next life chapter in New York.

Our local and global audience is growing steadily, but Letterform Archive is still a fairly young organization, and this year offered many opportunities to introduce ourselves to new audiences beyond the Bay Area. The last few months were particularly eventful, with a whirlwind of collections projects, hosting visits, planning exhibitions, and sending our team off to represent the Archive and show our collection at conferences all around the world. I had the pleasure of working with our curator, Rob Saunders, on a pop-up exhibit for the 2017 AIGA Conference in Minneapolis.

Tânia Raposo and Nick Sherman describe how they took on the challenge of representing 40,000 objects in a single visual identity.

Our new logo and website have been live for a few weeks, but now, after the rush of spring events, we finally have a moment to reflect on the redesign and ask its creators about their process.

This month the Letterform Archive team grew by three, increasing our capacity to support visits, catalog the collection, and ramp up publishing efforts, in print and online.

Uncommon gems from Letterform Archive’s type specimen collection will be on sale at the Typographics Book Fair, June 17–18 in New York