Letterform Archive

Established in 2015, Letterform Archive is a San Francisco nonprofit center for inspiration, education, and community. As a library and museum, we preserve over 100,000 artifacts of calligraphy, lettering, typography, and graphic design, and offer radical access to the collection through exhibitions, hands-on tours, research opportunities, and state-of-the-art publications. Our education program is anchored by a yearlong certificate program in type design, accompanied by public workshops, lectures, and salons on the letter arts, both in-person and online. We also serve a global community through social media, virtual exhibitions, and the Online Archive. The Archive was originally founded to give designers access to objects that are often overlooked or inaccessible elsewhere — or, worse, lost to the dumpster. It was soon clear that the need was greater than we imagined. Our audience expanded to creative and curious people of all sorts, as enthusiasm for type and design grew among the general public. As stewards of important design artifacts we cherish our role in preserving the growing collection, both physically and digitally, as well as sharing it in a way that enriches the community at large. These values inspired design pioneers like Emigre, Aaron Marcus, Jennifer Morla, and Michael Vanderbyl to donate their work, knowing it had a good home in a highly curated collection, but also that it would be seen and used by other designers—and the designer in everyone—for generations to come.