This Just In: Elaine Lustig Cohen
A generous donation from Elaine Lustig Cohen’s estate significantly enhances Letterform Archive’s mid-century modern holdings.
News
This Just In: Linotype Master Drawings
Once threatened by dispersal, over 60,000 letter templates from the British Linotype company now have a home at Letterform Archive.
In early April 2017, dozens of boxes arrived at the Archive. Each was packed with hundreds of folders containing thousands of large cards. And on each card, a pencil drawing of a single letter outline, annotated with measurements, character information, dates, and a draftperson’s signature.
Bruce Kennett Lectures on the Type Designs of W. A. Dwiggins
The author of our first publication gave two talks on Dwiggins’s typefaces. Watch the recordings.
Bruce Kennett, author of the upcoming biography W. A. Dwiggins: A Life in Design recently gave two in-depth lectures on Dwiggins’s typeface designs.
The New Face of Letterform Archive
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.
Welcome Paola, Stephen, and Elise
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.
Foundry Ephemera for Sale at Typographics
Uncommon gems from Letterform Archive’s type specimen collection will be on sale at the Typographics Book Fair, June 17–18 in New York.
Over 1,000 Backers Helped Us Reach Our Dwiggins Goals
A message of gratitude from Letterform Archive
On behalf of Bruce Kennett, Rob Saunders, Stephen Coles, and everyone here at Letterform Archive, I would like to thank all 1,059 backers who helped bring the Dwiggins book project to life and ensure Kennett’s remarkable biography will be published.
We are grateful for the outpouring of support, and thrilled to have connected with this worldwide community of Dwiggins fans. If we include the direct, offline orders we received from individuals and institutions who could not use Kickstarter, we surpassed our stretch goal. Therefore, in addition to publishing this book, we are committed to digitizing our entire Dwiggins collection, starting with the rarest materials.
Orders for the deluxe edition have now closed, but in case you or someone you know would like a copy of the standard edition and missed the opportunity to get one on Kickstarter, we have set up a page on Indiegogo InDemand to collect all remaining preorders until we go to press in August. Update: You can now order the book directly from the Letterform Archive shop.
The Crew of the Ship Earth
W. A. Dwiggins’s 1943 plea for peace uses his own illustrations and type.
In honor of Earth Day 2017, we bring you this small pamphlet, written and designed by W. A. Dwiggins nearly seventy-five years ago, and published by the Typophiles in 1943. The context for this piece was World War II. Influenced by his Quaker background, Dwiggins created, on more than one occasion, vivid work that advocated for an end to aggression and violence. The message of The Crew of the Ship Earth still resonates today, and it seems appropriate to look again at this tiny pamphlet and appreciate its powerful vision: “… an entirely new mental picture of the world’s population: a picture of all of us together sharing the same needs, the same dangers, the same fate … the same hope … .