Alastair Johnston : Hanging Quotes

Conducted over the course of four decades, Hanging Quotes is a landmark oral history project comprised of nineteen interviews with pioneer book artists, typographers, and poets. Alastair Johnston's thoughtful questions evoke fascinating new stories and information from luminaries as diverse as Nicolas Barker and Robert Creeley. He discusses the transition from cast metal to digital type with the prime movers in the field: Matthew Carter, Sumner Stone, and Fred Smeijers; and he takes stock of the field of artists' books in wide-ranging conversations with Sandra Kirshenbaum and Joan and Nathan Lyons, while his groundbreaking interviews with Dave Haselwood, Holbrook Teter, Bob Hawley, Walter Hamady, and Graham Mackintosh shed new light on the history of the book in the 20th century.

Alastair Johnston (born Glasgow, 1950) grew up in Northern England. He has taught Visual Studies, Typography, Book Design at University of California, Berkeley & Davis from 1975 to 1986 and at U.C. Berkeley Extension from 1987–2011, where he was Honored Instructor for the Academic Year 2004. He founded Poltroon Press with artist Frances Butler in 1975, and he continues to publish original writing by contemporary authors, most recently Lucia Berlin letters. He has designed books for British Library, Oak Knoll Press, Crown Point Press, Harper/Collins, Serendipity Books. His books include Nineteenth-century American Designers & Engravers of Type by William Loy (co-editor/designer); A Discography of Docteur Nico; Transitional Faces: The Lives & Work of Richard Austin, type-cutter, and Richard T. Austin, wood-engraver; Dreaming on the Edge: Poets & Artists in California; Omnia Vanitas by Max Jacob (translator).

Designed by Kyle Schlesinger and Alastair Johnston. Typeset in Gerard Unger's Swift 2.0. First edition of 500 copies.

ILLUSTRATED PAPERBACK. 7x9.75 inches.  274 pages. 2011.
ISBN: 978-0982792667