The RRK Collection: Wood Type 1828–2024

Amidst the rich ecosystem of digital technology and creative media that continues to flourish in our current era, analog processes and historical techniques still remain fundamental to the work of artists and designers. The past continues to inform the present and future, forever paving the way for what is to come.

This exhibition is an assemblage of projects, prints, and artifacts from and featuring the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection (the RRK)—a working archive of over 150 letterpress typefaces from the 1800s. As a living body of resources that continue to be utilized daily by students and scholars, the collection thrives as a core component of our curriculum and ongoing studies in the School of Design and Creative Technologies. SDCT is proud to present a selection of work produced with the collection, as well as work informed by its legacy—an ongoing design conversation unfolding over two centuries. It is also a glimpse of the extraordinary things that are possible as we continue to empower young designers and printers with the fortitude of the RRK.

Featuring work by:

Juleanna Culilap
Ava Darvish
Avery Fox
Julia Haas
Grace Harter
Coco Lai
Kenny Ly
Nhu Phung 
Veda Rallabandi
Gabi Williams

with Tasheka Arceneaux Sutton and Henry Smith