Letterform Archive is a non-profit museum and special collections library in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

dedicated to collecting materials on the history of lettering, typography, printing, and graphic design. It is curated by graphic designer Rob Saunders, who founded the museum with his private collection of "books, periodicals, maquettes, posters, and other ephemera" in 2014. The museum opened in February 2015 with 15,000 items. It moved to a larger space in 2020. Visits can be scheduled by appointment. The Archive presented the “Without Type: The Dynamism of Handmade Letters” exhibit with the

San Francisco Center for the Book The San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch in San Francisco, California in the United States. The first center of its kind on the West Coast, SFCB was modeled after ...

from January 22 to April 3, 2016.

Collection

As of 2020, the Archive’s collection totals over 60,000 items. The Archive acquired the private collection of Dutch collector Jan Tholenaar in 2015. In 2016, the Archive acquired over 200

wood type In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lig ...

prints from local printer and typographer

Jack Stauffacher Jack Werner Stauffacher (December 19, 1920 – November 16, 2017) was an American printer, typographer, educator, and fine book publisher. He owned and operated Greenwood Press, a small book printing press based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He ...

. Emigre Graphics also donated a large collection of their work, including interviews, printed sheets, posters, paste ups, ephemera, and the entire collection of ''Emigre'' magazine, that year. The Archive launched their digital archive of nearly 1,500 works and 9,000 images to the general public in 2019.

Publishing

The Archive publishes books about the material in its collection, including: the work of W. A. Dwiggins, as a full-length biography by Bruce Kennett in 2017; the work of

Jennifer Morla Jennifer Morla (born 1955, New York City) is an American graphic designer and professor based in San Francisco. She received the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award in Communication Design in 2017. Early life and education Morla ...

, written and designed by Morla in 2019; and the prints of Jack Stauffacher, edited and designed by Chuck Byrne in 2020.

Education

The Archive has an education program (previously in collaboration with

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

) which includes Type West, a full-year certificate program in

typeface design Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

, workshops on

lettering Lettering is an umbrella term that covers the art of drawing letters, instead of simply writing them. Lettering is considered an art form, where each letter in a phrase or quote acts as an illustration. Each letter is created with attention to d ...

and

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...

, and a lecture series. The Archive often hosts workshops and lectures. They have previously hosted type workshops by typeface designer

Sumner Stone Sumner Stone (born 9 June 1945 in Venice, Florida) is a typeface designer and graphic artist. He notably designed ITC Stone while working for Adobe. A specimen of ITC Stone is shown at his personal website. Career Stone studied at Reed College, g ...

and

sign painting Sign painting is the craft of painting lettered signs on buildings, billboards or signboards, for promoting, announcing, or identifying products, services and events. Sign painting artisans are signwriters. History Signwriters often learned ...

workshops by Better Letter Co.

References

External links

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Online Archive

{{authority control Museums in San Francisco Design museums Printing museums in the United States 2014 establishments in California