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London Kerning! A Book of Typographic Perambulations

Created by Glenn Fleishman

London has long been a place where type design and graphic design coalesced, and where the machinery of making fonts and the people with an eye to create them intermingled. This book captures a slice of both the contemporary part of it and its history, especially regarding type designer Berthold Wolpe.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

The Tiny Type Museum & Time Capsule for Early Birds
about 5 years ago – Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 09:32:15 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

The London Perambulator (1925)
over 5 years ago – Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 04:23:18 PM

Hello! It’s been a year since you helped fund my book London Kerning: A Typographic Perambulation around a City That Remembers. The book came at the end of my year as Designer in Residence at the letterpress program at the School of Visual Concepts, and was a great capper to that experience. I appreciate your interest and support in its writing, and hope you enjoyed reading it.

Between the Kickstarter, a post-campaign pre-order period, and then a Twitter campaign I ran for a second printing—I was too modest in the first printing quantity!—the book has 600 copies in print and I’ve got roughly 50 left to sell. (You can buy additional copies as always at the book’s mini-site. You can order five or more at a substantial discount.)

I was thinking about the book and mulling this last year when my friend Bruce Kennett dropped me a line. Bruce’s magnum opus on type designer and illustrator (and puppet maker and much more) D.A. Dwiggins is a work you should know if you’re interested in either type history or unique American artists.

Bruce said, casually, I’m sure you know the book, The London Perambulator. I did not! This slender, lightly illustrated book from 1925, tried to capture a London that its author, James Bone, said was already nearly gone by that year of publication. Every big city seems to tell that story every general, and sometimes faster. It’s a chummy book that meanders around the streets, and has some florid typography on its running heads and title pages—all swash characters, highly unusual at the time! But part of its playfulness. 

The London Perambulator with dust cover (lacking on my edition)
The London Perambulator with dust cover (lacking on my edition)

I acquired an inexpensive copy in good repair and am making my way through it. Fortunately, London didn’t tear down all its past, nor lose it in bombings in World War II, so the city remains recognizable from Bone’s descriptions.

Thank you again for the wonderful experience it was to write this book, meet marvelous people in London, see and document treasures, and begin worldwide acquaintances of all sorts. 

If you’d like to follow my other writing and doings, you can subscribe to a very low-volume email list, to which I send advance word of new projects (and discount coupons for them); or you can read new and sometimes exclusive work on printing, type, and language at my Patreon campaign—some items are public and others are for patrons starting at $1 a month.

—Glenn

A talk on London Kerning now available on video, more photos, and last books
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 09:17:24 AM

Hello!

Three things:

  • Video: a talk I gave around London Kerning
  • Photos: a full set of pictures from my research trip
  • Books: getting close to the end; new 5-book bundle

In May and June, I gave talks at Ada’s Technical Bookstore and Café in Seattle drawn from London Kerning, mostly focused on St Bride Library and The Type Archive, but with a good helping of the history of typefounding and other topics. I recorded both and the June talk came out better, so I edited it into a 90-minute video you can view at YouTube.

You’ll find some areas closely parallel what’s in the book, and others expand on points made in passing, as well as some discussion that’s not in there at all. (And I don’t talk about Berthold Wolpe or letterpress and type design in London really at all, which is about half the book.)

I gave a 20-minute version of this talk at TypeCon a few weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, and had a great reception, including from a number of people who had visited either St Bride Library or The Type Archive, and loved getting more history about them and insight into what’s going on there, today.

Point 2! I posted a Flickr album of an edited set of the photos I took while in London last year researching this book. I haven’t fully captioned them, but I think they work nonetheless. Over time, I’ll be writing up descriptions for more of the photos.

And third: I am slowly getting down to the last of the printed copies of London Kerning. I added a 5-book bundle to the online store, with a 20% plus flat-rate shipping of a few dollars for those who would like to give them away or use them in teaching. 

Thanks as always!

—Glenn

Coals To Newcastle: London Kerning on Sale in London!
almost 6 years ago – Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 01:41:41 PM

Hello, folks!

Ever since I published London Kerning, I’ve been trying to snag a place in London at which the book would be available! Because the cover price is so low and the shipping (even in bulk) from America so expensive, I had an uphill battle. 

However, the kind folks at Magma Books, who have two branches in London and one in Manchester, agreed to stock the book! They even featured it on their home page today! You can pop into a branch for a copy—their flagship store is smack dab in Covent Garden—or order online with far more reasonable UK and European shipping costs, too. 

I know some folks who lived in the UK and Europe and backed the original project for either a digital or print copy were looking for another (or multiple), but the high shipping costs I have to charge to get even a letter-sized, letter-weight package outside the U.S. deterred them. Now, the books have come to you!

Thanks again for your support throughout the campaign.

The Home Page of Magma Books
The Home Page of Magma Books

Did your book arrive? Plus, second printing about to ship
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Apr 03, 2018 at 11:28:02 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.