Jim Rimmer (April 1, 1934 – January 9, 2010) was a Canadian

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

letterpress Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker comp ...

printer, proprietor of the Pie Tree Press and is especially notable as a designer of

typefaces A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

Biography

Jim Rimmer was born on 1 April 1934 and was raised in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, British Columbia, Canada. He attended Vancouver Technical School, "which gave an introduction to metal type and presses through the school's large printing trade shop." After an apprenticeship he began a long period of working with type and design for newspaper publication and printing, all in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. Rimmer attended evening classes to study graphic design at

Vancouver School of Art Emily Carr University of Art + Design (abbreviated as ECU) is a public art university located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The university's campus is located within the Great Northern Way Campus in Strathcona. The university is a co-e ...

. "During his freelance years he worked on projects for the major agencies and design studios in Vancouver, for corporations, airlines, mining and forestry companies. A large part of his work entailed letter design and lettering projects." Along with his long career as a designer, Rimmer taught at several colleges including

Capilano College Capilano University (CapU) is a teaching-focused public university based in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, located on the slopes of the North Shore Mountains, with programming that also serves the Sea-to-Sky Corridor and the Sunshin ...

, ECIAD,

Langara College , mottoeng = Knowledge is Freedom , established = April 1, 1994 , type = Public , endowment = C$5.8 million , administrative_staff = , faculty = , president = Paula Burns , students = 22,000 , city = Vancouver, British Columbia , coun ...

, Kwantlen College, Richmond and UCFV, Abbotsford. For a brief time in the 1970s, Rimmer was type director of the Lanston Monotype Corporation in Vancouver. Rimmer was noted as the proprietor of the Pie Tree Press, located in

New Westminster New Westminster (colloquially known as New West) is a city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada, and a member municipality of the Metro Vancouver Regional District. It was founded by Major-General Richard Moody as the capita ...

, a printing office for which he designed many typefaces in metal, including Albertan, Kaatskill and Stern. The

P22 Type Foundry P22 Type Foundry is a digital type foundry and letterpress printing studio based in Rochester, New York. The company was created in 1994 in Buffalo, New York by co-founders Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy. The company is best known for its ...

marketed Rimmer's typefaces as the Rimmer Type Foundry until July 1, 2012, when it was announced that the rights to Rimmer's work were acquired by Canada Type. Over 200 digital faces, distributed among 18 families, have been made from Rimmer's designs. In 2007, Rimmer received the honor of becoming a fellow of the

Society of Graphic Designers of Canada The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) is Canadaʼs national certification body for graphic and communication design and since 1956 has established standards for design professionals, educators, and leaders. GDC licenses and certifies me ...

. In 2010, Rimmer was awarded the Robert R. Reid Award for lifetime achievement or extraordinary contributions to the book arts in Canada from the

Alcuin Society A voluntary association established in 1965 by Geoff Spencer, the Alcuin Society is a non-profit organisation founded for the book arts. It is located in Canada. It should not be confused with the Alcuin Club, an Anglican publishing society. Among ...

. Rimmer died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

on January 8, 2010.

Books

* Rimmer, Jim, ''Leaves from the Pie Tree Press'', Pie Tree Press, 2006.http://www.wlbooks.com/cgi-bin/wlb455.cgi/36722.html

References

External links

Rimmer Type Foundry at the P22 Type Foundry website

Jim Rimmer typefaces at MyFonts

*
Portrait of Jim Rimmer
– Linocut of Jim Rimmer by Andrea Taylor, from the UBC Library Digital Collections.
Records of Jim Rimmer and Pie Tree Press are held by Simon Fraser University's Special Collections and Rare Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rimmer, Jim 1934 births 2010 deaths Deaths from cancer in British Columbia Canadian graphic designers Canadian typographers and type designers Langara College people

Biography

Books

Further reading

References

External links