Letterform Archive

  • 2,229 photos
  • 2.6M views
  • Member since 2024
  • Last upload was
    September 2025
  • 🇺🇸
Based in San Francisco, Letterform Archive is a nonprofit center for inspiration, education, publishing, and community. As a library and museum, we offer radical access to a collection of over 100,000 items related to calligraphy, lettering, typography, and graphic design. This Flickr account primarily features our own photos with no known copyright restriction (but please contact us if you are a rights holder who believes otherwise). The images we share here supplement our Online Archive and editorial content. Many of the images are quick snapshots to fulfill research requests and invite context from the Flickr community. For images captured with our hi-fi photography, and other reproduction requests, please visit our site.

When were these photos taken?

230
1957
2024

 

Where were these photos taken?

15% of these photos are geotagged.

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Photos of interest

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Recent uploads

The last upload was September 2025.

Conversations

Here’s a selection of the conversations happening on these photos::

Four excerpts from Franklin Type Foundry, Convenient Book of Specimens, Cincinnati, 1892

from Letterform Archive

  • Florian Hardwig said:
    1. LB
    2. Lakeside Script!
  • Flickr Foundation said:
    Stunning!

Bruce Type Foundry, Nov. 1865 abridged specimen, Gothics detail

from Letterform Archive

  • Letterform Archive said:
    First page of this specimen:
  • Dan Reynolds said:
    Letterform Archive Stephen Coles Do you know have any showings of the type from the few years before this? The first instance of the design that I found was from 1864; Wilhelm Gronau’s family included the four little sizes at the bottom of a sheet of display types that it bundled with Journal für Buchdruckerkunst (the issue from 9 November 1864). My notes read that the design was already at the White or Boston Type Foundries in 1860. I guess I have that from Sara?
  • Stephen Coles said:
    Yes, Boston. Read the rollercoaster ride in these comments, just updated last week:

Bth. 013-1 Akzidenz-Grotesk breit fett

from Letterform Archive

  • Florian Hardwig said:
    A reminder (to myself) that the index cards inevitably show a snapshot in time, and don’t always include all glyphs that were available for a given typeface. Akzidenz-Grotesk breit fett additionally had a wider alternate r at one point. Also, the forms for a and g here presented as alternates were the default in Berthold’s Probe No. 476.

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