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  • Reading Type Specimens

    Event cancelled

    Reading Type Specimens

    From GBP 5.00

    Location

    Date

    Aug 29 2024 12:00 - 14:00
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    Description

    Reading Type Specimens: From Cicero to Spoonie Highdiddel Ladies’ Cicerone
    With Paul Shaw

    Date: Tuesday 11 June 2024
    Location: St Bride Foundation and Online via Zoom

    In-person times (BST):
    Doors/bar: 6.15pm
    Talk starts: 7pm
    Talk ends: 8.30pm
    In-person tickets: £8.50, £11, £13
    Please note: if available, tickets purchased in-person on the door will cost £15 per person. Please do check first if an event has tickets left as you may not be admitted if we have sold out. 

    Online time (BST): 7.00–8.30pm
    Online tickets: £5, £7
    Please note: you will be emailed the Zoom link for the talk at 6pm GMT on the day of the talk.

    Most designers—and before them, printers—have looked at type specimen books. They have looked at typefaces to see how beautiful (or ugly) their letters are. And they have looked at typefaces set in a mass to see how legible they are. But they have not read type specimen books. They have not read the words, phrases, and paragraphs. This talk will closely examine the texts that typefounders used to display and promote their typefaces. Those texts have varied greatly, both over time and from typefounder to typefounder. Eighteenth-century typefounders, following the examples of William Caslon, relied on Cicero's First Speech against Catiline to show off their text types. Even when Fat Faces, Egyptians, and Grotesques emerged as display types in the early 1800s, they continued to use "Quousque tandem abutere". But as the nineteenth century wore on, typefounders began to include quotations from literary and historical works, proverbs and maxims, patriotic references, verbal hijinks and humorous wordplay, and just plain random combinations of words.

    Investigating these texts can help to accurately date specimens and typefaces, identify connections among foundries, reveal the political sympathies of typefounders, and shed light on the social and economic circumstances of the times. There are other texts in type specimens beyond the texts that showcase the typefaces: introductions, price lists, advertisements for ink makers and others, and the typographic apparatus of headers, titles, captions, and credits.

    Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. He has taught calligraphy, typography, the history of graphic design, and the history of type in various New York area universities and art schools since 1980. He is the author of ‘Helvetica and the New York City Subway System and Revival Type’; the co-author of ‘Blackletter: Type and National Identity’; and the editor of ‘The Eternal Letter: Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital’. For the last three years he has been researching type specimens both online and at collections in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

    https://www.paulshawletterdesi...

    Organiser

    Established in 1891 with a clear social and cultural purpose, St Bride Foundation is one of London’s hidden gems.

    Housed in a beautiful Grade II listed Victorian building, St Bride Foundation was originally set up to serve the burgeoning print and publishing trade of nearby Fleet Street, and is now finding a new contemporary audience of designers, printmakers and typographers who come to enjoy a regular programme of design events and workshops.

    Many thousands of books, printing-related periodicals and physical objects are at the heart of St Bride Library. Volumes on the history of printing, typography, newspaper design and paper-making jostle for space alongside one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of type specimens. The printed, written, carved and cast word may be found at St Bride in its myriad forms. Architectural lettering and examples of applied typography in many media, together with substantial collections of steel punches and casting matrices for metal types are also held in this eclectic collection. The Reading Room is open to visitors twice a month and on other days by appointment. Although we operate on a cost-neutral basis, it is necessary to charge for some of our services. Details are available by emailing the library team at library@sbf.org.uk.

    St Bride retains many of its original features, including the baths, laundry, printing rooms and library. As part of the Foundation’s original mission to provide for the community, many of the building’s unique and characterful spaces are available to hire whether for meetings, weddings or classes.

    St Bride also houses the popular Bridewell Theatre, and Bridewell Bar (once the laundry), and hosts a year-round programme of plays, comedy, music and exhibitions.

    With some 65,000 visitors a year St Bride Foundation is a major London hub for the creative arts in London. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

    Venue

    St Bride Foundation, 14 Bride Ln, EC4Y 8EQ London

    FAQ

    • I have not received my Reading Type Specimens ticket via email. What should I do?

      The first thing to do is check your spam/junk filters and inboxes. Your Reading Type Specimens tickets were sent as an attachment and can be thought of as spam by some email services. Alternatively, you can always find your Reading Type Specimens tickets in your Billetto account that you can access in the browsers or the dedicated Billetto app. For more help with this, read here.

    • I wish to cancel my Reading Type Specimens ticket and receive a refund. What should I do?

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    • I have registered on the Reading Type Specimens waiting list, what happens now?

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    Event cancelled

    Reading Type Specimens

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