Of Subways & Offsides

Thursday, April 3, 2025, 6:30 - 8pm

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As part of the Herb Lubalin Lecture Series, Tobias Frere-Jones recounts the research and design process behind the brand new typography that he and Nina Stössinger created for the New York City Football Club. How to connect a relatively new sports team (and in a sport that’s less popular in the United States) deeply to the identity and pride of this iconic city? Frere-Jones and Stössinger studied the visual history of the city’s transit system, and let its loudness and grit inform their fresh and bold design to create a bond with citizens and fans. 

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Fore more than 25 years, Tobias Frere-Jones has established himself as one of the world’s leading typeface designers, creating some of the most widely used typefaces, including Interstate, Poynter Oldstyle, Whitney, Gotham, Surveyor, Tungsten and Retina. Frere-Jones received a B.F.A. in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Art in 1996 and has lectured throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has received the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs, the AIGA Medal, and most recently Cooper Hewitt’s 2019 National Design Award for Communication Design, recognizing his contributions to typographic design, writing and education.

Located in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square (on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets)

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.