W Allan Kitching and Dan Radley’s poster stands in sharp contrast to the cool elegance of Hyland and McCartney’s creation. Kitching began his design career at age 14 as a compositor in a print shop. With this auspicious start, he went on to a lucrative profession in design. But at age 47, he gave it up and returned to his passion: working with letters he could hold in his hand. Kitching is now renowned for his expressive use of type in creating visuals for commissions and limited editions. He works in colors, with wood and metal type—much of it on a large scale. Radley has done everything from composing political speeches to directing TV commercials to writing a musical.

The pair settled on the theme of “fears,” with the headline of “Who’s afraid of the big bad w?” Radley began verbally embroidering the w. “I drafted a number of nonsense verses,” he recalls. “The stanzas had a disconnected, nonsense feel, but the underlying themes were dark. For instance, I contrasted Wynkyn de Worde, the father of Fleet Street, with modern-day press manipulation.” The final poster grew out of Kitching’s design experiments and Radley’s words. “I started with a 100-line, wood letter w, printed in colors and varnishes to enhance the wide and wicked nature of our letter,” he recalls. The completed poster is bold, vibrant—and more than a little haunting.

26 LETTERS REVEALED
The British Library provided a venue for the exhibition. Although accustomed to hosting archive materials, its staff was eager to break away from any thought of confining the exhibition to a single gallery. They created a “treasure trail” with posters of different formats, sizes, and media scattered throughout the library.

The 26 Letters exhibition reaffirms that typography is a multifaceted and sophisticated form of communication, conveying purpose, emotion, atmosphere, and hierarchy. From a limited set of 26 abstract shapes, designers and writers combined their crafts to create an exceptional range of messages.