During the earlier part of my professional life I worked as an illustrator while developing a largely self-taught understanding of typography. Throughout most of my subsequent academic career (1993-2023) I’ve worked on a variety of design projects, most of them self-initiated. This has included publication design, book jackets, posters and ephemera.

Beyond the Margins

Beyond the Margins was a one-day symposium on experimental typographic organised by Dr Ian Horton and myself at Clare College, Cambridge in 2009.

Worldcon/Loncon

In 2014 I was asked to produce a series of posters for display at the Worldcon science fiction conference in London (Loncon).

Multi-colour typographic poster
Worldcon Banks 1
Green Men (and Scarlet Women)

The Green Men (a title later expanded to include ‘and Scarlet Women’) was a group of design and type enthusiasts originally based around Cambridge University Press.

There is a tradition that a member of the group designs the invitation to our occasional gatherings, using the same account of the group’s origins.
The green type is set in my stencil face ‘Hyacinthe’

Bookmarks

A series of bookmarks produced as a promotion for postgraduate courses at Anglia Ruskin University

Graphic Constellations

A poster for an exhibition and symposium on concrete poetry curated by Bronac Feran and myself in 2015

Types for the New Century

In 2012, under the auspices of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, (one of London’s historic Livery Companies or Guilds) I curated a travelling exhibition of contemporary typeface design for which I also designed the catalogue and exhibition graphics (see also my catalogue essay ‘Type and typeface design in the twenty-first Century’ on the ‘Writing’ page).
The exhibition featured around 100 examples of typeface design from around the world, including the work of internationally established designers such as Matthew Carter, Gerard Unger and Jonathan Barnbrook
Following the opening at the Stationers’ Hall, the exhibition travelled to a variety of public and academic venues in the UK and Europe, including the Museum fur Druckkunst, Leipzig, and the Bauhaus University, Weimar.