I received some mail from longtime long-distance friend Coen Fransen. I have a few of Coen’s C14 letterpress and linocut prints. One of my favourites (wood type with gold leaf) sits beside my desk in TYPOgraphHQ. I enjoy the experimental nature and variety of styles in his work so was excited to open the envelope and see what was inside. What I discovered was not what I was expecting. Yes it was delightful - yes it was experimental - yes it was analogue BUT it was not (exclusively) Coen’s. Instead, a bold and brilliant work conceived by Jolijn (Coen’s 9-year-old daughter). This exciting ..read more

  I admire Jamie Clarke greatly, not just for his phenomenal work and craftsmanship – but also because he is an outstanding human. Jamie is generous and kind, he cares about our community, and he is always a pleasure to chat with. So I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his current work in progress Rig Sans, its origins and his aspirations for this robust, text face. Let’s start with talking about Rig Shaded, it is a monumental achievement with lots of complexity and variation how has the typeface been received? Considering it occupies a specific niche, it seems to have ..read more

  A few months back I shared Ralf Herrmann’s Kickstarter campaign to digitise an original letterpress font designed by Heinz König, in 1925 at the type foundry J. D. Trennert & Sohn in Hamburg. After a successful crowdsourcing effort, Ralf released FDI Wiking, which has around 400 glyphs covering Western, Eastern and Central European Latin. Many characters have alternative glyphs, so both traditional German blackletter typesetting and international use with improved legibility are possible. I contacted Ralf with a few questions about his typographic journey and the project: Coul ..read more

  Elizabeth Fraser is a longtime long-distance friend of mine - she writes that her practice plays “with the interface between our analogue and digital lives.” Her multidisciplinary creative output is prolific and I have no idea how she finds the time to produce such high quality and interesting work at the rate she does. I admire her letterpress, linocut, penmanship and her amazing artist books, but I also greatly value her optimism, enthusiasm and playfulness that thread throughout her work. So I interrupted Elizabeth’s prolific making and asked her to tell up more about her journey, he ..read more

Wood Words is the London letterpress studio of Julia Humfress. She writes “It's a space for the visual exploration of typography through tangible, moveable wood letters.” I have admired Julia’s work for some time – but the volume of my admiration dialled up the last few months as I have been enthusiastically following her Letterpress Look Book project undertaken during the COVID lockdown.   Hi Julia, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions (I appreciate a lot is competing for peoples time and attention right now). Could you please tell us about your creative journey and ..read more

  I first meet Wayne Thompson at the 2013 TYPISm conference - I was in awe of his work - and enamoured with his good humour and enthusiasm for all things type. If you have read TYPOgraphJournal volume 01 you’ll know Wayne composed and performed the worlds first font song, peppered with typographic puns and font-choice anxiety (see it on YouTube here). Be it knowledge packaged practical type by hand workshops, mesmerizing conference talks, custom commissions, retail fonts, academic research or indeed musical odes Wayne is consistently producing innovative and interesting work. 6 years (tim ..read more

  Just as diamonds form under pressure - there is some fantastic stuff emerging from the difficult times we find ourselves in. One such initiative is United in Isolation, an online letterpress festival conceived by Andreas Brekke (Oslo, Norway) that connects printers and documents their stories. Andreas said he relied heavily on the online community to connect, collaborate and learn from as he got started with the medium.  He writes: “sometimes printing feels like an isolated activity. I know only a handful of people with the same interest as I have In my country, but I know many onl ..read more

Very humbled to be featured on the POP blog this month. You can get a glimpse into my new TypographHQ and learn about my personal journey with print mediums ..read more

  On Saturday 9th May Better Letters are hosting the YouTube Premiere of 'When Better Letters Met Stan Wilkinson', a short film (14m 40s) about this luminary British signwriter. The film (aired for free) will be followed by a Live Zoom Q+A with Stan Wilkinson, director Adrian Harrison, and Joby Carter (Stan's apprentice, now responsible for the signwriting work at Carters Steam Fair). Saturday 9th May 20:00 (London) YouTube Premiere 20:30 (London) Live Zoom Q+A This film is the third in a series of short films about veterans of the Sign Printing trade. It follows up on earlier prof ..read more

  https://letterformarchive.org/news/the-online-archive-is-now-open-to-all During the Dark Ages, monasteries were the repository of knowledge and information. With the Renaissance, the preservation of culture and writing took flight with the invention of the printing press. Since then, the beauty of the written word has manifested itself in endlessly creative and artistic lettering styles and typefaces. Nowhere on Earth is this beauty, creativity and artistry more important – or more available, free, to the entire world — than at San Francisco’s nonprofit Letterform Archive (www.letterfor ..read more