About HistoricType

Mission Statement

1. Create an online, free access resource for students, professionals, and scholars studying letters and typography on historic signs, broadsides, and buildings.


2. Encourage and promote research and writing on related topics by students, professionals, and scholars.
   
   

Image Database: August 2009

Create, manage, and archive a database of images of letterforms and type in the context of historical signs, broadsides, and buildings.

Objectives:

• Provide researchers with a central hub—a place to start their search.
• Fill a void. No organized database of images of historic type in context of signs, broadsides, and buildings exists. (Type history tends to focus on printed materials.) Images of lettering and type in this context tend to be available through personal collections or buried in collections dedicated to other things.
• Contextualize images in terms of place, date (of sign, not of image), materials, type style, etc. This will enable researchers to search through the database for specific examples of lettering and type. (Images currently available thru Flickr or other personal collections are rarely identified more specifically than “cool ghost sign, Anywhere, USA,.” In museum collections, the keyword “sign” might show up in the description of catalog number 009-03.987)
• Archive the collection, so it remains available.
• Draw on a community of type/signage enthusiasts and scholars to identify images and/or add information to images if any key terms are noted as “unknown” when posted to the database.

Editorial Board

Laura Franz, Editor/Managing Editor
Anna Dempsey, Operations Consultant
Connie Grab, Graduate Assistant 2007-2008
Mark Maxwell, Graduate Assistant 2008-2009

If you are interested in writing a blog post related to lettering on signage, please contact Laura Franz at LFranz(at)umassd(dot)edu.

Images can be added to the database via the Submit Images online form.

Technical Development and Support

Randy Apuzzo, Jetscram Design

Not Logged-in

Register or login below