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Staff Picks: Letterform Archive’s Holiday Gift Guide 2024
Got a discerning designer on your shopping list? Our team offers our favorite gift ideas from the Archive.
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, and everything is 20% off through December 8! Dive into our favorites and find something for everyone you love.
The Complete Commercial Artist: Making Modern Design in Japan, 1928–1930
Wonderful illustrations and quirky letterforms abound in this beautiful publication about Japanese graphic design. Where else can you find a colorful mermaid, a cheeky elephant, and a sassy dalmatian all in one place? This is my favorite publication of 2024.
— Alice Chau, Art Director, Letterform Archive Books
Letter Love: 40 Postcards from the Collection of Letterform Archive
Nearly everyone who visits the Archive leaves with the memory of a favorite letter they discovered while they were here. Now we finally give them a chance to take some of them home. Elise Carlton, the wizard behind our Instagram account, gathered some of the best examples, old and new, from across the collection and designed it in a way that folks can both share them (as postcards) and keep them (as a little book).
— Stephen “Stewf” Coles, Associate Curator & Editorial Director
Season’s Greetings: Charming Holiday Cards from Paul Rand
For months, I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of these holiday cards. They are delightfully quirky and whimsical. Designs are by Paul Rand, a legendary designer best known for his logos for IBM, UPS, ABC, etc. They break the mold of the typical boring holiday card and are perfect to gift as a set or to buy for yourself to send an individual card out to all your buddies!
— Katie Peeler Ranahan, Marketing and Communications Manager
Letterform Archive Membership
A museum membership is such a useful and unexpected gift. It’s giving an experience. When you share a membership to Letterform Archive, you give them the ability to visit exhibitions for free all year. Plus, they get invitations to exhibition previews, as well as members-only events and socials, and much more. It’s a way to share the inspiration of the Archive with folks who already love us, or who may not yet know about us.
— Sara Allen, Membership and Development Manager
Sista Said: Words of Wisdom from Black Women in Social Justice & the Arts
Now on view in our gallery is Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s powerful exhibition, Citizen Printer. This companion box of vibrant postcards features two sets of twenty quotations by Black social justice heroines, such as Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth, as well as writers who share the Black experience in fiction, like Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston. These frame-worthy cards feature backgrounds with distinct geometric designs that continue to tell the story of how Kennedy's bold and engaging style awakens, delights, and enlightens.
— Priscilla (Skilla) Zaccalini, Education & Events Manager
Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest
What is design’s role in making change? This book has hundreds of answers to that age-old question. From voting and reproductive rights to economic and social justice, many of the historical examples speak to issues that are still relevant today. The work is powerful inspiration for designers and educators.
— Jon Sueda, Curator of Exhibitions
Zuzana Licko Alphabet Throw Blanket
When it comes to home decor, it can be tricky to incorporate letterforms in a tasteful way. The alphabet featured on this blanket — designed by living legend Zuzana Licko of Emigre — strikes the perfect balance between representational and abstract; expect blown minds when what appears to be a simple geometric pattern reveals itself to be the letters A–Z intertwined. A truly unique gift with a back story that the design sophisticate in your life will appreciate a lot more than those Elle Cordova videos you sent them.
— Elise Carlton, Graphic Designer & Social Media Manager
Collected Specimen Booklets by Bernhard, Excoffon & Novarese
We’ve always wanted to reprint some of the more popular type specimens from our collection, but it seemed a pity not to produce them as they were, rather than forcing them into a common format. Somehow, our crack publishing team managed to concoct a package that binds together multiple booklet facsimiles, each at their original size, into a single portfolio with a magnet closure. Each of these collections, dedicated to a different type designer, is a beautiful feat of book engineering and does all these little masterpieces justice.
— Rob Saunders, Executive Director & Curator
