In April 2007 the TDC lettering walk explored Brooklyn Hights and Downtown Brooklyn. In the decade since then the latter area has undergone a wholesale transformation with the development of MetroTech and the erection of numerous luxury apartment buildings.
On May 19 we will return to Downtown Brooklyn to see what remains of its lettering past as well as to see what is new. We will also visit nearby Boerum Hill for the first time.
We will see classical roman capitals, Art Deco, and geometric sans serifs on courthouses, schools, firehouses and other governmental buildings; grotesque sans serifs on tenements, churches and manhole covers; street signs on buildings; and, of course, examples of vernacular lettering and ghost signs.
Paul Shaw is a designer and a design historian. He has been leading lettering tours of New York City neighborhoods for 10 years and of other cities, both here and in Italy, since 1997. As a designer he specializes in letterforms from calligraphy to type design. Paul has designed or co-designed 18 fonts, including Kolo, Donatello and Old Claude. As a historian he has written or lectured about Bartolomeo Sanvito, W.A. Dwiggins, Oswald Cooper, Frederic W. Goudy, George Salter, Phil Gruskin, Hermann Zapf and others.
Meeting place and itinerary will be emailed a few days in advance of the tour.
This event is being held in association with NYC x Design:
