Oui ! Il est très important pour nous de représenter le travail de tous les Canadiennes et Canadiens. Nous travaillons très fort pour traduire le contenu et prévoyons de lancer la version française du site en hiver 2024. Nous apprécions grandement votre patience alors que nous donnons vie à cette nouvelle idée. Si vous êtes intéressé à nous aider avec le contenu en français, veuillez nous envoyer un courriel à contribuer@canadiantypography.ca.

Yes! We endeavor to engage with and deepen our collective understanding of Indigenous peoples’ distinct histories, through examples of oral, drawn, written and printed language. From the Mi’kmaq in Atlantic Canada, to the Métis in the Red River Valley, the Inuit in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, and the Salish of the Pacific Northwest Coast, we aim to highlight excellence in typography from all communities, and acknowledge their significant contributions to Canadian history and society. If you’d like to contribute Indigenous work (oral stories; drawn, written or printed artifacts), please email us at indigenous@canadiantypography.ca.

Wonderful! We would love to see it. Theres two ways to get in touch. If you’re up for it, you can start a conversation with us by filling out our submission form here online. It is helpful to include reference imagery, approximate dimensions, date of creation and design credit attribution (when known). If that seems like too much work, you can just email us to start a dialog. Note: at this time, only work created on or before 1985 is being accepted.

Please also keep in mind that this is not a portfolio site. Work will be reviewed by the board and added to the archives on a monthly basis.

While we fully acknowledge the massive amount of spectacular work that has been created over the last 50 years, thanks to the advances digital computing has given rise, we’ve decided to focus (initially) on the diverse Canadian pioneers that laid the foundational groundwork, in a variety of connected disciplines. We do plan to expand the collection with more recent work in an upcoming phase, but have our hands quite full with piecing together the historical record upon which it all sits.

We also want to mitigate the submission of work from currently practicising designers and students. This is not a portfolio site. Work selected for the archive will go through a rigorous, juried selections process, with emphasis focused upon exceptional craftsmanship, innovation and a work’s ability to rise above other examples like it - setting an example from with which to learn from.

We welcome all contributions that help us improve the accuracy of our content, and we know there’s likely errors or omissions on the site, despite our best efforts for accuracy. Please reach out to contribute@canadiantypography.ca with details. Please copy the URL of the material you are referring to in your email. Any printed or tangible proof of your proposed correction is welcome, but not required.

Send us an email to contribute@canadiantypography.ca and let us know what you’re interested in or have experience with. As a volunteer organisation we welcome all the help we can get.

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing whether printed on a page or displayed on a computer screen. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, determining point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning).

The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Calligraphy, lettering and type design are closely related crafts, now considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. The CTA consider all letterforms, including sign making, as worthy of inclusion. Note: typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.

The word ‘typography’ in English comes from the Greek roots τύπος typos, ‘impression’ and – γραφία – graphia, ‘writing’.

Typography surrounds us in just about every aspect of our lives; It is more or less invisible as it does its primary job – to communicate information to the reader. But as is true in many diverse domains, there are those that push boundaries, those that innovate and pioneer – creating new forms of expression within the medium.

The Archives’ purpose is to highight those at the pinnacle of the craft in Canada.

The Gibson Fund is a financial resource made available to the Archive project via proceeds from sales of Gibson, a sturdy contemporary humanist sans serif typeface family that fits pretty much any design application (PS - you are looking at it now. The entire CTA Archive site is set in Gibson.) The Gibson family comes in 9 weights ranging from Thin to Heavy, and their matching italics for a total of 18 fonts. Each of the Gibson fonts comes with more than 400 glyphs and extended support for Latin languages. The Gibson VF variable fonts, added in 2023, are included with the license of the complete Gibson package. The entirety of Gibson’s sales revenues are used to support a variety of causes aiming to improve the typographic arts and elevate design education in Canada. It has been one of the 21st century’s most widely used fonts for UX and corporate design. The Gibson Fund is not open to solicitation. Learn more about Gibson here, and here.

To learn more about why the Gibson fund was created, watch this.