Wednesday Nov 11 was sketch night at the New York Public Library. Social media helped to fill the house of over 100 guests to hear co-chairs Steven Heller and Lita Talarico moderate five contributors to Typography Sketchbooks. The art librarian Arézoo Moseni hosted the evening.
Read more about the event.

The speakers:

Viktor Koen teaches illustration at SVA MFA Illustration. The primary tool Koen uses to create the work is the computer. In a media world where the computer is all too often used as a crutch, Viktor has used it to clarify his artistic voice. His images are not computer based. His artistic process drives the machine, the machines does not drive him.

He sketches with pen and pencil, but also with scissor and glue.

Travis Cain, a graduate of SVA MFA Design, is a designer and art director at Keihls in NY. He is also the designer of a gaggle of KidRobot vinyl toys, including Dunny Series 2009 Wood, Cheese and Ribeye Dunnys and KidRobot BFFS.

Travis refers to his sketches as type experiments, playing with forms, hand-lettered type and type as pattern.” But his sketches usually find their way into his work. Not always directly. His sketches are more experimental and looser than he can normally be in his daily work.

Puragtory Pie Press, a letterpress and print publisher, actually began in 1977 in Madison, Wisconsin when co-founder Dikko Faust “pied” (or dropped and smashed) an overfilled job case of cold metal 8 point Century Oldstyle. He sorted it day and night for weeks, made his first two books, and moved to New York City. In 1980 Faust married Esther K Smith.

Smith has dutifully kept sketchbooks on and off since she was in college. Her books are drawings and found type materials. The examples here are typographic sketches that are different from her average sketchbooks as “They are part of their collaborative process.”

Matt Luckhurst a graduate of the MFA Designer as Author Entrepreneur program, is a designer and letterer working at Collins.

When he sketches, Luckhurst says, “it is usually just to get something on paper.” He claims to have a notoriously bad memory, so he always has something to draw on. The sketches serve as a memory bank.

(Photos by Viktor Koen)