Type designer and MacArthur Foundation Award Recipient, at his home in Cambridge MA, 2010. (Photo by Aynsley Floyd/The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

APHA New England is delighted to announce that Matthew Carter will present APHA’s Lieberman Lecture on Saturday, December 3, 2016, at 2:00 PM at the Museum of Printing in its new location at 15 Thornton Avenue in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Please RSVP.

Matthew Carter’s talk is titled “Genuine Imitations: A Type Designer’s View of Revivals”

A number of Matthew Carter’s designs have been based on historical types, ITC Galliard, Big Caslon, Miller, Vincent, and the Yale typeface among them. Others, like Snell Roundhand and Mantinia, were derived from non-typographic sources from the past such as handwriting manuals and lettering in the work of a painter. In this lecture Carter explains his debt to the historical legacy, and describes cases where historically-based designs have been adapted to the needs of contemporary clients. His type revivals have varied in their faithfulness to their models, which raises questions about the responsibilities of the continuator of traditional forms, about degrees of interpretation, adaptation to current technology, ancestor worship, and travesty.

Mr. Carter’s previous APHA involvement includes the 2002 Lieberman Lecture “Jack Stauffacher In Conversation with Matthew Carter,” and his article “Theories of Letterform Construction, Part 1” in Printing History Whole Number 26–27 (Volume 13, No. 2 and Volume 14 no. 1) 1991–1992.