Jerry Kelly on some of the all-time great type and book designers

Jerry Kelly is a calligrapher, book and type designer. His work has been honored many times - his designs have been selected more than thirty times for the AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year.” In 2015 he was presented with the Goudy Award from The Rochester Institute of Technology.

Kelly has served as Chairman of the American Printing History Association, and President of The Typophiles. He is an active member of several committees at The Grolier Club. He has written many articles and several books on calligraphy and typography, including The Noblest Roman: The Centaur Types (co-authored with Misha Beletsky; winner of the 2016 Bibliographical Society of America Prize).

Kelly has taught typography at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design, and has lectured on the subject for The Cooper Union and numerous other organizations.

Before starting his own design business in 1998, Kelly was Vice President of The Stinehour Press, preceded by a decade as designer at A. Colish.

We met at The Grolier Club in New York to discuss some of the great type and book designers Jerry writes about in A Century for a Century. The two other books of special interest to collectors mentioned during our conversation are The Best of Both Worlds: Finely Printed Livres d Artistes, 1910 2010, and The Art of the Book in the Twentieth Century