Type design collection

What was previously the Non-Latin Type Collection is now part of the Type Design Collection.

The Type Design Collection also includes type specimens, metal and wooden type and type drawings by leading twentieth-century designers such as those for the development of the New Johnston typeface (1979-81), for Walter Tracy’s Times Europa and Karnak Black typefaces, and material from Matthew Carter. By bringing all our type-related collections together under one name, we fully expect it to inspire and support research and teaching in global type and typography, and form the basis for collaborations with other disciplines.

The Non-Latin Type Collection, originated in a 2003 donation of archival resources from Linotype, have been growing since by consolidating material from other collections in the LPGDC. It holds approximately 10,000 original type-drawings and accompanying documentation for the typographic development of a wide range of languages and writing-systems – namely, Arabic and related scripts: Jawi, Kurdish, Pashtu, Persian, Sindhi, Urdu; the North Indian scripts: Assamese, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Oriya (Odia); the South Indian scripts: Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu; as well as the South Asian script Sinhala. Other scripts include Amharic (Ethiopic), Burmese, Greek, Hebrew, and Thai, with some material on Cyrillic and a few scripts, such as Lao, not all of which were realised into type.

The Collection’s documents relating to the development of projects testify to trans-national collaboration throughout the design and typefounding processes revealing significant design decisions and technological impacts that have shaped the reading experience of diverse cultures from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.