Letterform Archive and Google San Francisco

This week we had a team outing to the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. It was both fun and educational; they’d pulled out materials ranging from hand-drawn religious texts (a pair of Book of Hours), both hand-drawn and printed (Gutenberg) bible pages, early printed materials, and more modern magazines and books. I personally found some of the early printed materials the most interesting, particularly an early specimen page and book. They’re roughly the equivalent of a modern font book; you looked through a printer’s specimen book to choose a type for your printer materials.

I used the trip to the Archive to also check out Google’s San Francisco offices (we visited the Archive in the morning, and I worked from the SF offices in the afternoon). I only visited the Spear Street building (there are a handful of others), but it seemed pretty nice (it does seem like all of the peripheral locations are nicer than the main campus, possibly because they’re newer). They clearly have lots of folks that visit; a variety of spaces were marked as for use by visitors. And the location is nice: near the Bay Bridge and not too far from the Ferry Building.