One Book, Two Cover concepts
Prototyping the covers for Morla : Design.
News
Jennifer Morla on Type Selection
The award-winning author of Morla : Design shares her secrets for choosing the right typeface for the job.
Jennifer Morla on Drawing Ideas from the Eames, Sol LeWitt, and More
The Author of Morla : Design treats us to her best-loved inspiration sources — and shares how far-ranging influences make it into her work.
Shaped Text: An Aesthetic Whole
From ancient practice to contemporary children’s books, the endeavor to form text into image is found throughout the Archive.
This Just In: Jacob Jongert for Van Nelle
A large collection of objects by the Dutch modernist demonstrates the branding power of lettering + color.
Our holdings of packaging design recently got a significant boost with the addition of several hundred objects created by Jacob (commonly signed “Jac.”) Jongert in the 1920s and ’30s for Van Nelle, a Rotterdam-based manufacturer of coffee, tea, and tobacco. The extensive and varied collection includes labels, boxes, tins, in-store displays, posters, advertising, and other collateral, like pocket notebooks and calendars.
This Just In: Martin Venezky
The San Francisco designer reminds us about the beauty of not knowing how things will turn out.
On paper, Martin Venezky is an artist, designer, photographer, and educator. He is also a collector, and some might even consider him a sort of curator. He often plays these roles all at the same time, whether he’s working on a project or not. In both his life and in his practice, he tells stories by combining and recontextualizing images and objects found in the world to create new worlds. His process reveals a lot about his own story too — one of imperfection, surprise, and patience.
“To design a poster and do the whole thing digitally? That gets boring. You’re just sitting there hitting keys, but you kinda wanna get in and see the scale of it.”
My Internship at Letterform Archive
Joyce Yin reflects on her time as our 2018 intern.
This Just In: Mark Fox and Angie Wang
The San Francisco duo demonstrate the impact of the designer’s voice in politics and graphic design.
Mark Fox and Angie Wang do not shy away from deploying design as critique. Together they are Design is Play, a studio practice formed in 2008 recognized for award-winning branding and identity work in addition to political graphics. They are educators of design and typography at California College of the Arts, as well as advocates of issues they care about. Fox and Wang’s collection at the Archive is worthy of attention — for both its aesthetic merit and its cultural relevance in our current political moment. Many have debated the designer’s role in politics, and Fox and Wang set an example of how design can pull back the curtain to describe how the world is, or even imagine how it could be.