Tobias Frere-Jones and Nina Stössinger will unveil their signage & identity typeface design for the new Essex Market, and share the thinking and process behind it. While the building that will soon house the market is brand new (the Essex Crossing development on Delancey and Essex Streets, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), this indoor food market itself has served the city for nearly three quarters of a century.

The typeface anchors this newest incarnation of the market in its history, by referring back to some of the meat market’s earliest painted & neon signage. The designers have researched these original signs and reinterpreted them in contemporary form, adapting the fonts for various applications and media — including coming full circle to new neon signage. A case study that discusses questions of design, history, and technology; ways in which letterforms can shift and translate between eras and applications; and how the design of letters weaves into the story of the city and its visual memory.

Over 25 years, Tobias Frere-Jones has established himself as one of the world’s leading typeface designers, creating some of the most widely used typefaces, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten and Retina. Tobias received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Art in 1996 and has lectured throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006, Royal Academy of Visual Arts The Hague (KABK) awarded him the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs for his contributions to typographic design, writing andeducation. In 2013 he received the AIGA Medal in recognition of exceptional achievements in the field of design. Nina Stössinger

Nina Stössinger is a Senior Typeface Designer at Frere-Jones Type. Originally from Basel in Switzerland, she graduated in multi-media design from Burg Giebichenstein University of Art Halle/Germany, where she discovered her love for type. She went on to receive a CAS in Type Design from Zurich University of the Arts, and an MA in Type and Media from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Nina teaches type design at Yale University School of Art, serves on the Board of Directors of the Type Directors Club, and has spoken at numerous international conferences and events. Her published type designs include Conductor (with Tobias Frere-Jones), Nordvest, and FF Ernestine.