Paul Shaw Lecture @ TPM
“Dwiggens, Knopf, and Linotype:  A Triangular Relationship”
Thursday, October 27, 2016

Talk description:

W.A. Dwiggins (1880–1956) was a multi-faceted designer: calligrapher and lettering artist, illustrator, ornamentalist, advertising designer, periodical designer, book designer, type designer, and marionette maker. He summed up what he had learned as an advertising designer in Layout in Advertising (1928). The following year he received the AIGA Gold Medal. Those events marked a shift in Dwiggins’ career as he focused on book design and type design thereafter. He was the principal freelance designer for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. from the early 1930s until his death. During those years he designed all or part of over 300 books for the firm. Dwiggins was largely responsible for the reputation of quality that Knopf established. In turn, Knopf promoted Dwiggins and contributed strongly to his fame. At the same time that he was working for Knopf Dwiggins was simultaneously designing typefaces for Mergenthaler Linotype. He was their main outside designer and typographic consultant. Dwiggins designed five typefaces and two sets of ornaments that were released, but other designs remained unissued due to the Depression and World War II. He not only used his own typefaces (released and unreleased) in his Knopf designs, but he almost exclusively relied on Linotype faces. Knopf colophons thus promoted Linotype, completing a triangular relationship among designer, publisher and type manufacturer. This talk will survey Dwiggins’ career as a book designer and type designer with an emphasis on his work for Knopf and Mergenthaler Linotype.  Join us for his talk on “Dwiggens, Knopf, and Linotype:  A Triangular Relationship”.

 Lecturer Biography:

Paul Shaw is a designer and a design historian. His work has won awards from AIGA, Type Directors Club and the Art Directors Club. He is is the author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System (2009), a monograph on book jacket designer Philip Grushkin (2012); editor of The Eternal Letter (2014); and co-editor of Blackletter: Type and National Identity (1998). Paul writes for Eye, Print, Baseline, Letter Arts Review and other publications. He teaches at both Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. Since 1980 he has been at work on a comprehensive biography of W.A. Dwiggins.

paulshawletterdesign.com

$30 AIGA and Printing Museum members  |  $45 non-members

6:30 Registration/Social
7:00 Lecture Begins @ TPM theater

Presented by AIGA Houston in partnership with The Printing Museum.  To register please visit http://houston.aiga.org/event/aiga-houston-x-the-printing-museum-presents-paul-shaw/.