The W.A. Dwiggins Lecture
While the Society is a private organization, it has co-hosted the annual W.A. Dwiggins Lecture for almost five decades in partnership with the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.
With its intent to be of interest to students, and practitioners in the typographic, graphic design, and publishing communities in Boston, the list of speakers has been diverse. In more recent years, the Society has attempted to choose speakers that are of particular interest to students.
The Society is dedicated to this annual event and wishes to thank the BPL for its continued support.
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Past Speakers
| 2024 | Kelly Doe | Typography and Transforming the New York Times, 1851-2024 |
| 2023 | John G. Kristensen | What Letterpress Printing has Taught Me about Life | 2022 | Alison Bechtel | Text! Image! Action! |
| 2021 | Cancelled | (due to covid) |
| 2020 | Steven Heller (via Zoom) | The New Typography in America |
| 2019 | Rick Poynor | David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian |
| 2018 | Douglass Scott | Alvin Eisenman: Typographer, Teacher, Technologist |
| 2017 | Robert Bringhurst | The Work of Hermann Zapf |
| 2016 | Bruce Kennett | The Power of Mirth | WAD & the Serious Business of Fun |
| 2015 | Fred Smeijers | From Small to Big, and Back Again |
| 2014 | Brenda Danilowitz | The First Fifty Years of Josef Albers’ “Interaction of Color” |
| 2013 | Ben Fry | Typography & Terabytes |
| 2012 | David Lemon | Changing Traditions |
| 2011 | Luba Lukova | Graphic Guts |
| 2010 | Khoi Vinh | Ordering Disorder - KV on Interaction Design |
| 2009 | Matthew Carter & Jerry Kelly | Hermann Zapf at 90 |
| 2008 | Erik Spiekermann | Working Type |
| 2007 | Sumner Stone | The Essential Form |
| 2006 | Ellen R. Cohn | Benjamin Franklin |
| 2005 | Milton Glaser | Milton Glaser |
| 2003 | Chaz Maviyane-Davies | Creative Defiance |
| 2002 | Joel Meyerowitz | The Role of Photography and Social Consciousness: Creating the World Trade Center Archive |
| 2001 | Maira Kalman | (un)Design |
| 2000 | Philip B. Meggs | The S Word |
| 1999 | Anita Silvey | Children’s Books and Their Creators: An Illustrated Overview |
| 1998 | Edward R. Tufte | The Aesthetics of Information |
| 1997 | Peter Kindersley | Better Ways to Communicate |
| 1996 | David Macaulay | Taking the Shortcut |
| 1995 | Steven Heller | Lucian Bernhard: The Master Who Couldn’t Draw Straight |
| 1994 | Sheila Levrant de Bretteville | Q. What Is Worth Doing? |
| 1993 | Edward McDonald | Jan Tschichold and W. A. Dwiggins: The Priest and the Tinker of Modern Typography |
| 1992 | Alvin Eisenman | Ray Nash |
| 1991 | Sinclair Hitchings | Dwiggins on Cornhill |
| 1990 | Douglass Scott | Eclecticism to Modernism: American Graphic Design in the 1930s |
| 1989 | Matthew Carter & Carl Zahn | Design of Type - Design with Type |
| 1988 | Dietmar R. Winkler | A Quest for Quality, a Question of Integrity |
| 1987 | Oscar Handlin | Freedom of the Press: The Social Foundations, 1760-1850 |
| 1986 | Leonard Baskin | The Intrusion of Expression in Anatomical Atlases: 1540-1850 |
| 1985 | Gay Walker | Achievement in Excellence: The Meriden Gravure Company and Harold Hugo |
| 1984 | Dorothy Abbe | The Many-Faceted Dwiggins |
| 1983 | Alan Fern | More Than Books: The Library of Congress in All Its Diversity |
| 1982 | Peter Davison | One Hundred Twenty-five Years of the Atlantic |
| 1981 | Susan Otis Thompson | The Gay Nineties and American Book Design |
| 1980 | David R. Godine | The Life and Work of Rudolph Ruzicka |
| 1979 | Rollo G. Silver | Daniel Berkeley Updike and the Merrymount Press |
| 1978 | Charles A. Rheault, Jr. | The Riverside Press in Retrospect, 1852-1971 |
| 1977 | Philip Hofer | WAD as I Knew Him |
| 1976 | Alexander S. Lawson | Frederic W. Goudy: A Glance into the Archives |
| 1975 | John E. Benson | Two Hundred Seventy Years of Monumental Lettering |
| 1974 | Laurence B. Siegfried | WAD: A Personal Recollection |