You’ve heard of Dead Heads (followers of the Grateful Dead), well now there are Letter Heads (grateful followers of letterhead designs). I don’t think there are as many of the latter as there are of the former, but I heard a rumor that Jerry Garcia might have collected letterheads (but then again, it is just a rumor).
Jeff Roth, a man of extensive pop culture knowledge and researcher par excellence, loaned me a collection of letterheads from the 1940s. Individually, they have certain graphic charm, but in a critical mass (only a few are displayed here), they speak to the typographic style and graphic history of their times.
As a typographic and design road map, I’d follow these letterheads anywhere.
(Nightly Heller: Yesterday’s announcement that Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is offended by the 2012 London Olympics logo. Maybe it is good after all.)
