For nearly a decade, Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals have collaborated under the label Post Typography on creative endeavors encompassing graphic design, illustration, typography, lettering, and printmaking with additional forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work, design theory, and vandalism. Post Typography’s portfolio contains projects for a diverse array of clients including The New York Times, U.S. Green Building Council, Maharam, WIRED, and Random House. Their work has received numerous fancy design awards and has been featured in such books as Ellen Lupton’s Graphic Design: The New Basics, Phaidon’s Area 2, and Taschen’s Contemporary Graphic Design, as well as a new monograph of the studio’s work by European publisher Pyramyd Éditions.
In 2005 Post Typography curated Alphabet: An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography, a well-regarded art show that has spent the last five years traveling nationally to dozens of galleries and universities. Post Typography has appeared in numerous art and design exhibitions, and the studio’s posters are collected by high school punk rockers and prominent designers (whom they consider equally important). Strals and Willen teach classes in design and typography at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and have lectured at the Cooper Union, Minneapolis College of Art & Design, and Harvard University among others. They both live in Baltimore.
MICA Center for Design Thinking
Lettering & Type is co-published by Princeton Architectural Press and the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Center for Design Thinking. The Center for Design Thinking develops and publishes original research on graphic design while providing opportunities for MICA faculty and students to create and publicly disseminate their visual and written work. The Center uses profits from its commercial publishing projects to fund special research and to provide grants to graduate students to assist with design and production.