Events
The Past is Always Present: The Evolution of Typographic Education
with Ellen Lupton, Angela Riechers, Grendl Löfkvist, Stephen Coles
Typography! Technology! AI! Oh my! Keeping type education relevant in the 21st century.
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Join renowned graphic designer and educator Ellen Lupton and Letterform Archive’s Education team members Grendl Löfkvist and Angela Riechers for a spirited conversation on type education: where it’s been, where we are now, and where it might be going. They will discuss the ways in which past methods of teaching typography set the stage for current pedagogical practice, take a look at how students are currently taught typography in the West, and look ahead to a future that embraces emerging technology and language expansion beyond Latin character sets. What surprising ideas got left behind? What are the upcoming challenges and opportunities? Moderated by the Archive’s Associate Curator & Editorial Director Stephen Coles.
The Past is Always Present lecture series is part of The 10th Anniversary Symposium celebrating ten years of Letterform Archive.
Ellen Lupton
Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. Her books include Thinking with Type, Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the inaugural Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision. Her popular Type Mom persona on Instagram (@EllenLupton) shares design education with everyone.
Angela Riechers
Angela Riechers is the Education Director of the Letterform Archive and an educator, writer, and graphic designer originally from New York. She holds an MFA in Design Criticism from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. Before arriving at the Archive, Angela worked as an editorial art director for national magazines, taught at a number of New York City design colleges, and was Program Director of Graphic Design at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Her book The Elements of Visual Grammar was recently published by Princeton University Press.
Grendl Löfkvist
Grendl Löfkvist teaches type history and theory in the Type West program. Outside the Archive, Grendl teaches the history of graphic design, book arts, typography, and letterpress printing at City College of San Francisco, as well as calligraphy at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Grendl has ink in her veins: she was an offset press operator for 20 years; and she serves on the board of directors for the American Printing History Association’s Northern California chapter. Her interests include the study of printing as a subversive “Black Art” and she’s always on the lookout for bizarre or macabre print, type, and lettering lore (she is a bit of a goth).
Stephen Coles
Stephen “Stewf” Coles, Associate Curator & Editorial Director (he/him), joined the staff after serving on our Board of Directors since its inception. Since the early 2000s he has been active in the type community, initially as a creative director at FontShop, and later as an independent consultant, connecting font makers with font users. Stephen wrote the book The Anatomy of Type and co-founded the influential websites Typographica and Fonts In Use. With his background in design and journalism, combined with an obsession for type history, Stephen is responsible for the online face and voice of the Archive, and shares the collection through the blog and other editorial projects. As a member of the curatorial team, he helps to shape the future of the collection.
