This year’s Creative Week Urban Lettering Walk is co-sponsored by the Type Directors Club, The One Club, and Legacy of Letters. Design historian Paul Shaw will walk participants through the adjoining West Side neighborhoods of the Garment District and Chelsea between 42nd Street and 14th Street to see letters.

The Garment District is an industrial neighborhood, dominated by early 20th century setback skyscrapers with a variety of lettering styles for the building names. Mixed in with these gritty industrial buildings are a few churches and retail outlets to provide additional lettering variety. Chelsea is more residential with named apartment buildings, schools, churches, and banks to provide lettering of interest. Stylistically, we will see textura, versals, sans serif, slab serif, classical Roman capitals, some Art Deco, and a little bit of neon. In short, a little bit of everything.

Paul Shaw has been leading lettering tours of New York City neighborhoods and of other cities since 1997. As a designer, he specializes in letterforms and has designed or co-designed 18 fonts, including Kolo, Donatello and Old Claude.

Meeting place and itinerary will be emailed a few days in advance of the tour.