My Love of Typography

I took 2 years of type as an undergraduate, and loved it.  I was lucky to have studied under Phil Meggs, Rob Carter, and Ben Day. These three professors/writers were frustrated that there was no acceptable textbook to teach typography, so they wrote their own, Typographic Design: Form and Communication (1985, Van Nostrand, Reinholt), now in its fourth edition.

Because I started out as a graphic designer, I collect items associated with typography like hot lead, lead, and wooden type blocks and I have an old type drawer circa 1940. In my home office I have a beautiful reproduction of Caslon hand-printed in Williamsburg (properly framed for protection and to give it the visual status it deserves).

The Bodoni typeface was originally designed by Giambattista Bodoni in 1798, and was revived as ATF Bodoni drawn in 1907 by Morris Fuller Benton, and released by American Type Founders.  Mr. Benton's son gave me one of his father's books, Book of American Types, Standard Faces, by the American Type Founders (1934) that I still treasure.

It was a thrill to have had lunch with Matthew Carter, co-founder of Bitstream, the first independent digital font foundry at an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) luncheon in the early 90's. 

Okay, enough about typography for now.