HWT Type Library Typeface Identification

Among the many cabinets and rows, along the back wall of the museum type library, there is a row of cabinets of various heights and widths and colors. Their thin drawers are filled with many metal typefaces of different sizes. Many of the cabinets have been graciously donated from smaller print shops. The previous owners of these typefaces could simply memorize the location of each typeface as they were constantly in use. On arrival to the museum, they became part of a much larger collection. It no longer became practical to memorize where each of the typefaces are located among the thousands all over the large museum. For the typefaces to be more accessible to others, I took on the project to identify and label them. I took my makeshift table, stool and a copy of Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century and set up my station in the farthest isle of cabinets. I started with identifying each typeface. Some of the type cabinets had parts of type families and once I had identified one, I was able to identify a few more of different sizes. Copperplate Gothic and Bank Gothic seem to be popular in different face sizes of 6 and 12 point. This means the body of type could be consistently 6 points and the face could be 6 points then 5 points then 4 points and so on. I found there to be 8 different Copperplate Gothics with 6 point bodies. While I found quite a few font family collections, I also found many single typefaces. These took a bit longer for me to identify because many were not familiar to me, so I paged through typeface books to find them. The great thing about the single typefaces is that many of them were more decorative and had letters that were easier for me to analyze the identifiers. When I open a drawer to identify the type, I usually pull out a capital letter “A” first. Paging through the type books, the “A” is the first letter on the end and thus faster scan. Not only that but the letter “A” can say a lot about a typeface. Whether it’s san-serif, rounded or pointy, symmetrical or not. If I find a typeface it could be, I then pull out the “Q”. Not only is it close to the “A” in the type drawer but I found the “Q’s” to also say a lot about the typeface. Whether it has a cursive style or a loop or just a line. If I have to pull out more letters I usually pull out “B”, “C”, “R”, and “S”. They are also next to the “A” and “Q” and they cover a lot of identifying parts of the type. That makes them quicker to put away as well. I also discovered that one could identify a blackletter typeface with pretty much just the “S”. I rarely had to pull out more than those six letters to identify a typeface. Once in a while, a lowercase “a” was needed. After the typefaces were identified, I typeset the type names for labels and spaced them out for printing. I printed them on the Vandercook SP-15 in the pressroom and they are off to be trimmed and put onto their drawers. I can only hope my math is correct and the names of the typefaces in their fresh black ink, will sit in the center of their clean white labels, ready to be hung on their awaiting drawers. -Michaela Tures