M E E T   Y O U R   T O U R   G U I D E S

Professor Michael Twyman is recently retired from the Department of Typography and Graphic Communications at the University of Reading where he taught courses in the history of typography and printing and the theory of graphic cmmunication. He joined the university in 1959 and immediately set about implementing art history tours (which included inscriptional study in both Rome and Florence), which he continued to lead for some thirty years. Michael is the author of Printing 1770-1970, the standard work on the subject which has recently been reissued -- The British Library Guide to Printing: History and Techniques -- and numerous articles on lithography, typography and the theory of graphic communication. He has served on the editorial boards of Visible Language and the Printing Historical Society. His intellectual heros are Ernst Gombrich, who has shaped much of his thinking on the visual world in general, and Nicolete Gray, who has greatly influenced his views on lettering. [For an indepth interview, click here.]

Garrett Boge has 22 years of professional lettering and type design experience. He began his career as a lettering artist and type designer at Hallmark Cards in the early 1980s, leaving to establish his own studio, initially in Kansas City and later in Seattle, where he now works out of his home/studio in the historic Pioneer Square district. Acquiring his first Macintosh in 1986, Garrett was one of the first independent type designers to embrace desktop font development tools, and to start his own digital foundry - LetterPerfect. In the ensuing years, he has designed more than a dozen original typefaces and produced over a hundred custom and proprietary faces for major companies such as Hallmark, Viacom, Microsoft, Monotype, and Apple Computer. LetterPerfect's growing line of original display fonts shows both his early influence as a greeting card lettering artist, and his more recent interest in reviving historical lettering styles. Over the past several years, Garrett has pioneered and refined techniques for making art-quality rubbings from classical inscriptions. Boge, who maintains a residency in Rome, is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in historical lettering through the University of Reading in England.

Paul Shaw is a calligrapher and typographer working in New York City. In his 20 professional years as a lettering designer he has created custom lettering and logos for many leading companies, including Avon, Lord & Taylor, Rolex, Clairol and Esté Lauder. Paul has taught calligraphy & typography at New York's Parsons School of Design for over ten years and conducted workshops in New York and Italy. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. His publishing credits include "Blackletter Primer" and "Letterforms", as well as articles for Print, Fine Print, Design Issues and Letter Arts Review. He is the recipient of awards from the Type Directors Club, AIGA, the New York Art Directors Club, Print and How magazines. He won a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to study the type designs of Morris Fuller Benton, and a Newberry Library fellowship to study the work of George Salter. Paul's experience in using research libraries to study historical manuscripts will be shared with tour participants wishing to visit the Vatican Library. Paul was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2002. [Read Paul's 'day journal' from the '97 tour of Rome.]