Type Deck

Iconic typographic and lettering styles curated and organized into six influential design genres

Client:
Thames & Hudson
Project Components:
, ,
Credits:
Written by Steven Heller

Conceived, written, and designed in collaboration with Steven Heller for Thames & Hudson, Type Deck is a curated collection of typographic specimens presented though a custom packaged 54-card deck and organized into five key typographic style categories. The set is an amalgam of typefaces and lettering styles including those with unique creation stories, oft-overlooked and more obscure sets, as well as lettering movements that have been inspirational throughout design history and continue to serve as a source of inspiration for ongoing interpretation and reference.

The Deck identifies characteristics and places particular forms in historical periods and aesthetic contexts using six categories: Victorian, Arts & Crafts / Art Nouveau, Black letter, Modern, Eclectic and Post Modern.
While working on the project, Rob Saunders, founder of the Letterform Archive in San Francisco, kindly offered the opportunity to visit the archive and have a first hand look through a wide variety of typography specimens and lettering books for inspiration and context. It’s one thing to see images of the collection, its another all together to have a chance to hold and handle some of the samples and to marvel and craft, engineering, and production that went into their production.
Each of the individual cards offers a sampling of typographic personality and a historical primer and back story of its existence in visual culture, including more modern day uses and interpretations. While the six divider tabs provide a brief synopsis of the typographic style through history.
A fun Easter egg of the Type Deck collection is that each of the sets of letters spells out a word associated to the overall typographic style. The work on TypeDeck inspired our creation of TypeWrap as well as our Type Journal, both also published by Thames and Hudson. Jason Calfo and Kevin Gatta— Type Guys produced a series of video trailers for Type Deck with Steven Heller, including a complete of the Victorian type movement.