From Paper to Screen: The Digital Capture of Lettering, Typography, Printmaking, and Graphic Design
The Archive’s digitization librarian offers a glimpse at how we digitally capture the artistry and craft of our physical collection.
News
Letterforms / Humanforms
The interaction between letters and bodies is a recurring theme in art and design history. Our newest team member, sair goetz, shares what they’ve discovered in the Archive’s collection and beyond.
Periodicals as Collections, No. 4: Counterculture Newspapers and Magazines
An explosion of independent publishing in the 1960s and ’70s took advantage of new, accessible technology to spread countercultural messages around the world.
From the Collection: Tadanori Yokoo
Our growing collection of posters by the avant-garde Japanese designer are portals to universes never before imagined.
Post-war Japan was a catalyzing backdrop that shaped a generation of artists and designers, including the renowned Tadanori Yokoo (横尾 忠則). Over the span of two decades, the Emperor’s divinity had been absolved, the nation was demilitarized, and US military troops had occupied cities. In 1960, at the age of 24, Yokoo traveled 300 miles from Kobe to Tokyo, to the epicenter of this cultural whirlwind. Tokyo, now home to a rapidly increasing population of over 10 million, was preparing to host the 1964 Summer Olympics while reckoning with violent student protests and riots. There, Yokoo’s practice took root and would earn him a reputation for bridging high and low, pre- and post-modern, and Eastern and Western cultures, and challenging conventions by charging posters with intense emotion. Trailblazing across multiple media, Yokoo responded to absurdities of signs and symbols, tensions between seemingly opposing worlds, and existential questions of the self to offer works that are humorous, chaotic, and deeply autobiographical.
Sponsor a Shelf
Thousands of books and other design artifacts are lined up for the big Archive move. You can complete their journey.
Like many of you, we’re working from home. That doesn’t mean, however, we aren’t still planning the move and thankful to be working with our crews to complete the buildout as safely as possible.
And, right now, your support is more important than ever.
Honoring Scott Lindberg
The modernism enthusiast’s collection of mid-20th-century design has a new home at Letterform Archive.
Through his extensive knowledge and keen curator’s eye, Scott Lindberg was a constant source of inspiration to the design community in the Seattle area and beyond.
Cabin F(or)ever
A stay-at-home design inspiration kit for letter lovers.
The Online Archive Is Now Open to All
With nearly 1,500 objects and 9,000 hi-fi images, Letterform Archive offers unprecedented virtual access to our collection.
