New York Types is a letterpress art exhibition which brings to life real words heard by locals on the streets of New York. These snippets of real New Yorkers' conversations, quotes and stories will be presented on the walls of the ADC Gallery by some of the city's leading letterpress artists.
New York Types, running December 15, 2011 through January 6, 2012, is presented in collaboration with New York Writes Itself (NYWI), a new ongoing series of creative productions fueled by the people of New York, and Leo Burnett New York. NYWI is a new type of media platform designed to connect the people of New York with the city's creative community. The foundation of NYWI is a website that acts as a running archive called 'The Script', where people can write down these New York moments. Locals registered as "scribes" can submit short-form content like unique quotes, characters, and scenes they witness in New York.
"The Script" is then open to the city's creative community who can use it as inspiration to re-create as writing, art, music, short films, photography or whatever they like. The project will aggregate different kinds of real-time inputs from the people of NYC to generate interesting and entertaining content that will appear all around the city.
For the New York Types exhibition, each artist or group - currently including Swayspace, Center for the Book Arts, The KDU, Peter Kruty Editions and Tarhorse Press - has picked a collection of NYWI "Script" entries to interpret in his or her own letterpress style, bringing the real words to life letter by letter. The artwork is for sale in limited editions of 10, with a total of 500 pieces for sale. A video trailer for the exhibition can be viewed here: