Bill Moran

Bill Moran is a graphic designer, letterpress printer and professor of typography/design history at the University of Minnesota. I started making Letterbugs in 1999 as a part of Saint Paul’s annual Art Crawl. It was my cheeky attempt to bring to life art that crawls. I like letters and I like bugs. A hybrid seemed like a good idea and 25 years later I’m still making them. My Letterbugs are printed on 140-year-old presses with type designed in 19th-century. They have a sturdy, “I’m going to be here long after you”attitude, just like insects.

‍Fun fact: Anyone can make a Letterbug, including you! Click here to make yours and post it on your social media of choice using #letterbugs tag! The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography hosts my working archive. My work is in the permanent collections of the Gutenberg Museum, Tipoteca Italiana, The Newberry Library, The Haley Gallery in Nashville, Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum and the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography.

‍Hamilton Wood Type
From 2002 to 2021 I volunteered at, then was hired as Artistic Director atHamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin where I founded the museum’s annual Wayzgoose conference, created the WoodType Legacy Program and established partnerships with Adobe, Appleton Coated Paper, Chronicle Books, Monotype, Mark Simonson Fonts, Neenah Paper, Hoefler&Co., & P22 Type Foundry.

‍TipoItalia
After leading typographic study-abroad tours since 2008, I created TipoItalia in 2023 in collaboration with Sandro Berra at TipotecaItaliana where we showcase the best of Italian lettering and typography and guiding students through the making of their own digital fonts. You can read Steven Heller’s review of it here.

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