ABBREVS. – A Collaborative Amalgamation of Acronyms, Initialisms, Contractions and Crasis

Overview

Chad Reichert and Susan LaPorte have collaborated on numerous typographically inspired projects, including curriculum development, typefaces, exhibitions, and personally motivated curiosities. In these cases, projects typically begin with a visit to John King bookstore in downtown Detroit, where they often find themselves rambling through the stacks and discovering an unusual dictionary that piques their interest. Their first collaboration was a typographic compendium inspired by the dictionary Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, & Preposterous Words.

For this collaboration, they focused on “A Dictionary of Abbreviations,” compiled by Herbert John Stephenson, a lexicon of abridged organizations, auxiliaries, and a host of other amalgamated institutions. As a result, they created a project around the vernacular of logotypes, trademarks, and emblems, using the entries as inspiration. Because Professors Reichert and LaPorte are design educators, they often enjoy assigning tasks; therefore, they each determined a set of abbreviated entries for each other to design a graphic representation for each letter of the alphabet. This 186-page book is a compendium of the work they created together, yet separately, celebrating typographic design history.

This book was presented at TypeCon 2024. It was also selected into the 2025 STA 100 Design Competition.