News / Publishing

When Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko donated the Emigre papers to Letterform Archive not long after we opened our doors in 2015, we were spoiled for all collections to follow.

It wasn’t just that their archive was rich with material that defined an important era in design—one in which the new digital tools of the 1980s and ’90s created a surge in independent publishing and type design, with VanderLans and Licko’s innovative Emigre magazine and digital foundry at the forefront.

This holiday season, Letterform Archive staff members bring you their favorite gift ideas from our shop. From letterpress postcards printed by hand to colorful design books and cozy, type-forward blankets, we’ve got unique ideas for every type and design lover on your list.

Every purchase you make helps support the Archive’s education, exhibition, and preservation programs. Dive into our favorites and find something for everyone you love.

Order your gifts now! Thursday, December 19 at midnight is the last day for delivery by December 24.

At Letterform Archive Books, the team has the honor and the privilege of crafting books that tell the story of our collection.  This year, we have been delighted to deliver up a dozen beautiful titles — ranging from an entertaining and visually splendid autobiography by lettering artist Michael Doret to a dynamic facsimile edition of Piet Zwart’s famed 1928 catalog for a Dutch cable company to Letter Love, a pleasing sampler of letterforms presented in a pint-sized postcard booklet.

I do not want to put blackface on so-called “fine printing.” I want to print negro. To use printing to express negro culture. To do to printing what the blues and spirituals did to music.

So begins Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s Citizen Printer, a compendium of works spanning the 35-year career of a storied letterpress printer and righteous maker whose practice demands justice while delivering joy.

In 800 full-color reproductions, divided into chapters on social justice, shared wisdom, and community, Citizen Printer immerses readers in Kennedy’s bold and colorful output. Armed with salvaged ink and type, the self-described “humble negro printer” layers his audacious calls to action over dense typographic or geometric backgrounds. Sourced from civil rights activists across U.S. history, ranging from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, Kennedy’s chosen messages revive the ongoing fight for abolition and ensure that its lessons still reverberate today.

At Letterform Archive we’re always looking for stuff that shows the way a designer thinks, and reveals how their work was made. People visit us not just to see final works on paper — books, ephemera, posters — but also to see all the other artifacts produced along the way to the final piece, including  sketches, proofs, and variations that never made it to print. That’s why we were so thrilled in 2018 to accept a donation from Michael Doret that includes about half of his working archive. (The other half went to the Herb Lubalin Study Center at The Cooper Union in New York where he got his start.)