It's a pleasure to announce that the ornamental alphabet I built over the summer will soon get the royal treatment in book form. Co-published with Wells College Press, An Alphabet of Sorts is now available for presale, to be delivered in the Spring. To celebrate this collaboration, here is the Prospectus, which features all of the exciting details of what's to come. All fitting within a 6x9" page size, this is one of the tightest and most elaborate forms I've built in a while. Given the amount of information that needed to be conveyed in a small space, the type is largely 8 point and under. The previously set ampersand makes another appearance here.

For the title, I set SORTS from 6 point square ornaments and added asterisks in some corners to soften what would normally be a smooth curve. ALPHABET is set in Cleft Gothic, a Chicago-based typeface designed about 120 years ago. I liked that it was small and gothic but had its own bit of ornamentation going on.

The main paragraph was set in 6 point Bernhard Gothic, both Light and Medium, and gives an overview of the forthcoming book. I'm so pleased to have Paul F. Gehl of The Newberry Library on board to write the introductory note to this endeavor!

Since I'll be printing the cover and end papers as well on gloriously red Italian paper, I've been experimenting with creating a smaller alphabet unique from the large one that will be featured inside. One idea is to reverse out an alphabet from ornaments on a smaller scale. This would be a nice juxtaposition to the main letters and present a new challenge to designing a set of letterforms.

The bottom of the prospectus contains the nitty gritty details of the book. You may recognize the name of this guy listed here, now comfortably stationed at Wells.

Presales are going strong, and the edition is expected to sell out! I will be finishing the printing by the end of the year so that binding can begin. Books will be delivered around May Day, 2015. I'm happy to send the above Prospectus; just contact me with your address!

Back in the Spring, I put together this little print for the Legion Paper Scavenger Hunt at the National Stationery Show (you can read all about that here), and never had the heart to put away the M form. That sparked the challenging idea to create an entire ornamental alphabet that could potentially be turned into stationery and more. So I started in random order to develop other letterforms. Most measure about 21 picas high (about 3.5") with varying widths based on individual letters. I sketched rough layouts for each letter, with some being considerably easier than other. The L is unique in that I specifically used many of our ornaments originally designed for the Lanston Type Company.

Once I got into the flow, the letters practically designed themselves.

And then suddenly there were 26 letters, comfortably living on 3 galleys.

I wanted to include an ampersand because they are perennially popular and it would serve my ideas for the end result of the project. But this form proved to be quite difficult; it looked as miserable as this image while I walked away from it for a bit to revisit ampersand designs that might better inform the outcome.

After a break, this is what came together. Getting all of the angles was pretty killer but the final form was solid. It even includes a tiny 'and' catchword.

Occasionally taking a break from the typesetting, I started printing the actual folded note cards. These didn't necessarily go in order, but the first three did. They are all printed in silver on Stonehenge cotton paper, and include 100% recycled kraft envelopes.

And here the M, slightly updated, makes another appearance.

A few of the details...such lovely ornaments.

The stationery is sold in sets of 6 by the letter, so you can pick your favorite. Great for gifts, too! And of course there's the ampersand if you just can decide.

It struck me that the forms themselves were really beautiful and that they could perhaps be used for another purpose. So after printing each run, I left a little silver ink on them and grabbed the camera. I digitally cleaned up the images to adjust the contrast to best show the ornaments and then flipped the images so they could be read by all.

Then I had these printed digitally as postcards on thick, recycled card stock.

And they're fun to play with! Sold individually, it's easy to mix and match and spell whatever you like. Or, of course, send them as postcards.

We also had some fun punching holes in them to make banners. Here are the adorable and lovely Will and Sido from Ravenswood's own Beans and Bagels.

Beautiful box sets all ready to go. These are available on our etsy site now.

And if you're interested, we can sell letters individually so you can use the actual printed cards as a display. Given that Mr. Starshaped and I will be celebrating our tenth anniversary this week, I put together this grouping for him. See the importance of that ampersand?