Generous donation creates Ingram Hall’s Boge Library

A treasury of graphic design and typography books

This fall, students will welcome a new resource in Ingram Hall. The Boge Library will reside in Ingram 118 and is chock-full of graphic design resources. The library’s namesake and sole contributor, Garrett Boge (pronounced “Bogie”), donated his collection of more than 1,200 books and publications in the summer of 2013 to be used by future PLU generations. The large collection focuses on typography and calligraphy.

The collection includes type and design journals from Boge’s era, like Emigre magazine, that still convey groundbreaking type and graphic design. He was particularly active when digital type design grew exponentially (alongside the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984). The collection also includes treasures such as the 1923 American Type Foundry Type Specimen and Catalog. Weighing in at seven pounds, the exquisitely letterpress-printed catalog is very rare and provides a printed specimen of most of the fonts and ornaments in the Elliott Press.

Type forms first inspired Garrett Boge in 1973 during a calligraphy course at Evergreen College. He later graduated with a BA degree in Art/Graphic Design from Marylhurst College and soon began his career as a lettering artist and type designer at Hallmark Cards. After three years he left Hallmark to establish his own studio – Image & Idea – specializing in hand lettering and commercial graphic design. After acquiring his first Macintosh in 1986, Boge was one of the first independent type designers to embrace desktop font development tools, establishing the digital foundry – LetterPerfect Fonts in 1988. That same year, he came to PLU to teach as an adjunct design instructor for the academic year. Boge was later contracted by Microsoft to work onsite at the Monotype type foundry in Salfords, UK to assist with character hinting of the Windows 3.1 TrueType core fonts. LetterPerfect eventually became a virtual foundry, managed largely on the Internet.

“Both SOAC and Publishing and Printing Arts (PPA) students will have a chance to see (and handle) these books, furthering their understanding of typography, graphic design and publishing in a way that digital media can’t convey,” Jessica Spring, Elliott Press Manager and Resident Artist says. “We were also fortunate to receive a large collection of printed ephemera and art supplies from handmade paper to Garrett’s calligraphy tools. The ephemera will enhance the library and studios in Ingram, and the supplies will be put to use this semester.”

The Boge Library will be open later this fall. To kick off its opening, Spring will curate an exhibition to share some highlights of the collection in Mortvedt Library.