Sample books have a special place in the archives of graphic and type design. They are, at the same time, examples of letters and entire alphabets and examples of the way the respective typefaces can be used in real and speculative layouts. Many years ago, I stumbled across a rare bookshop in upstate New York that was selling the type specimen collection of author,designer, former editor of American Artist Fridolf Johnson, known for his popular Dover books on bookplates, vintage printing ephemera, and the prints of Rockwell Kent, among others, His collection included two large cardboard boxes with file folders organized by typeface and including a few hundred specimens from Bauer, ATF, Huxley, Barhardt and Spindler, Deberny & Peignot, and dozens more type foundries. Acquiring them was the trigger for various books and articles I edited and wrote.
In the stacks of the rich typographic legacy of Letterform Archive are many of these rare specimen books and brochures. The archive has chosen to publish facsimile editions of some of the choicest pieces by leading typeface designers, collected in portfolios ingeniously designed by Letterform Archive’s art director, Alice Chau.
These titles publish in the trade in early February but are available directly from Letterform during December and January. The first three-volume set is available here: Type By Lucian Bernhard; Type By Roger Excoffon; Type By Aldo Novarese. I also spoke with publisher Lucie Parker about the plans for future facsimiles in their Type By series.
What is your intention for the series?
Our intention with Type By is to present these marvels of marketing exactly as they were first produced: at full length, in full color, and in their original trim sizes, bound into individual booklets or folded into simple pamphlets.
This is in part to share examples of foundries’ inventiveness in print during the first half of the twentieth century when such ephemera flourished, but also to present the complete original typefaces in all available styles and sizes—alternate glyphs and all—for type students and scholars.
While in-use examples ultimately do so much to shape a typeface’s story, there’s something particularly special about seeing a typeface presented in its original specimen, which served as a sort of visual statement of purpose at the time of the type’s release. In their proposed use cases and choices in layout, format, and material, specimens give us a sense of what type designers and foundries envisioned for their typefaces and hint at the design ethos and ideas that led to the faces’ creation.
Individual spreads of these specimens are often reproduced in publications, but we wanted type enthusiasts to have access to every page of the specimens’ rich and wonderful context and experience the physicality of their unique formats. As a cornerstone of Letterform Archive’s collection, we find these specimens just too delightful—colorful and dynamic, innovative and daring—to show only a handful of layouts.
We’ve focused the first three on the output of individual designers to show their remarkable range, as well as the relationships between the various faces they designed.
Are you planning more in the series?
If there’s demand, we’d be thrilled to produce more titles in the series. We have a collection of more than 4,000 type specimens, and we’re eager to share them with our core audience of type lovers. First up, though, is Stephen Coles’s Modern Type, a mega volume on twentieth-century type told through the lens of type specimens, which will come out in 2026. So the next installment in the Type By series would likely be in early 2027.
Who and what else?
It’s very early days—we’re in the fun phase of looking at our collection materials and seeing what would make the most robust and visually splendid selections. But the team here is excited to research Adrian Frutiger, A. M. Cassandre, Rudolf Koch, and Imre Reiner as potential subjects for the next installment.
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