About

What this site covers

Hello Auan Designs is a reference on graphic design as a documented history: the people who cut and drew the letters, the objects they were printed on, the institutions that commissioned them, and the years each of those things happened in.

The material is held in six sections. Punchcutters takes the designers, from Claude Garamond's sixteenth-century punches to Eduard Hoffmann's brief at the Haas foundry. Typefaces treats named faces as dated objects — the foundry, the year, the specimen sheet. Posters runs from the Zurich concert grids to the Fillmore. Sign Systems covers wayfinding as large-scale typography: Beck's diagram, Unimark's manual, Kinneir and Calvert's roads. Books goes from the Kelmscott Chaucer to Penguin's three bands, and Screens picks the story up when the work moved off paper.

Every piece is written around named work: a named person, a named foundry or studio, a named object and the year it appeared. Where a face or a sign system is discussed, the page shows the thing itself. The complete list of pieces sits on one archive page, oldest object first.