Visit to the Type Library

I visited the Typographic Library at Winterbourne House for a day of inspiration and research. If you know me, you know how much I love and appreciate print design and paper! So I really enjoyed being able to look at design through the ages in physical books, magazines & journals and delve into typography especially! I learnt and observed new things and it really inspired me to do a project on paper again.

I looked at a wide range of material including type specimens, books about letterpress and Penrose publications. My first find was this CD case, ’The William Caslon Experience’. Everyone knows I love music so this find was a great start to my day. The cardboard case was printed with black and silver ink, and unfolds to a collection of printed media inside, including a collectable poster and stickers. I then moved on to looking at type specimens - books that type foundries used to send out to show off the details of their typeface, the different fonts, individual characters and glyphs and examples of how the type can be used in design. I then moved on to looking at books filled with all sorts of design from letterpress, to traditional logo design, to modern design inspired by research into the past. I loved finding a range of inspiration which I photographed and I am keeping for future reference to help inspire my work. I also found a lot of books which I have added to my wishlist!

The final thing I wanted to share in this blog is this little handmade stamp book. It was a gift to the library, a unique and limited edition of concertina books filled with little Dutch stamps. The idea was to look at the small, intricate and considered designs and share the inspiration with others. I love the idea of the book as a gift as well as way of taking real world design and using it as physical book of inspiration.

Some of the things all of this research has inspired me to do:

• make a type specimen inspired zine, sharing some of my favourite fonts

• Make digital posters inspired by pre-digital design aesthetics

• Try out more packaging

• Collecting more design and making little zines about them

I loved the type library and I can’t wait to go back again soon!