Storing Large Type

Our school received a generous donation of 50, or so, typefaces. All are in great shape, but the cases have rotted away.

Some of the faces are quite large (72 pt) and do not fit within the compartments of a typecase.

Are faces like this traditionally stored in undivided cases? If so, in what order?

Log in to reply   3 replies so far

Often such large type can be readily stored on a standard 9”x13” galley, or can be stored in typecases without divisions or cases with only horizontal dividers set to the height of the characters. If cases are available with no divisions, strips of wood can be cut to fit the width of the case and placed between lines of stored characters.

Many of the sign printing fonts were stored in such horizontally-divided cases.

I agree with John. I have approximately 1,900 fonts of handset type in my shop, so storage is always a creative challenge. I have around 35 standard type cabinets with cases in them, but the majority of the collection is stored on galleys in numerous galley racks. Size and shape of galley doesn’t matter much, but I do prefer the 4-bank galley cabinets that hold 100 galleys each.

My general rule is that anything 18 pt. or larger can be stored on a galley. Instead of wood strips, I simply cut chipboard strips approximately 1/2” to 3/4” high, and just shy of the inner galley width in length. My ‘style’ has always been to fill the galleys in rows A to Z, followed by puntuation, followed by lowercase a to z and then followed by the figures. You can often get several fonts onto a single galley. My type and galley cabinets are numbered, so if my filing system indicates that a fonts is at G3/72, that means that it is in Galley Cabinet #3, on galley number 72. If the designation is 14/21 that means it is in Type Cabinet #14 in the 21st case.

Since the larger sizes of type are generally used for headlines, and not setting body copy, this is a fairly practical arrangement for me.

The only hard part now is remembering the NAME of a face so I can go to the computer or the card files and look up the location.

Great help…thanks!