Stephen Banham is old-school. Or, as he recently questioned via email ‘….should that be Old Skool?’ Either way, you get the idea! You mightn’t necessarily know his name, but you’ve more than likely seen his brilliant work around the traps in Melbourne town… after all, Stephen’s design studio Letterbox has been putting out carefully considered, elegant design solutions for a varied client base for nearly 20 years!
With this in mind, when I went to meet Stephen recently at his Brunswick studio, I was kind of expecting to meet someone a bit older. At least someone with grey hair, you know? But there was no grey hair… in fact I am guessing Stephen couldn’t possibly be over 40, and since he started Letterbox in 1991 I am really struggling to do the sums in my own head…!? Anyway, unless he has some kind of Doctor-Who style tardis at his disposal, Stephen is clearly a stayer! He’s one of those rare people who has committed themselves to just one business and one job for the last 20 years… and this in itself says a lot about his many achievements. Even after so many successful years in business, Stephen has kept his business deliberately small… in this time he has truly perfected his craft, and maintained tight control over the studio’s prolific output. It’s no wonder Letterbox are just so freaking good at what they do!
Letterbox undertakes mainly typographic projects. They also design awesome fonts, which you can buy (here!). The projects Letterbox takes on have varied over the years… but one thing has always been important to Stephen – the cross-pollination of client-commissioned projects (identity, signage systems, book design, and font customisation) with studio-commissioned projects (publications, typeface design, lectures, forums, tours and exhibitions). One brilliant example of a Letterbox love-job is the Characters and Spaces self guided typography tour Stephen curated last year – I LOVED IT! There are so many brilliant extra-curricular Letterbox projects documented on their website… do go and have a look around – I promise you will be impressed! :)
Other things to love about Letterbox :
Letterbox takes on many brilliant interns and promising designers from Australia and across the globe, including last week’s interviewee Niels Oeltjen! (who designed some of their fonts which you see above).
• Stephen insists on a strict policy of leaving the office at 5.30pm on-the-dot everyday! AWESOME. I want to be that person.
• Stephen is a quiet achiever, but he is such a brilliant local talent, and is super well respected within Melbourne’s design community… he’s also in the middle of writing a book about typography in Melbourne, to be published by Thames and Hudson and the State Library of Victoria, due out next year! (I will keep you posted!). I am really grateful to Stephen for taking part in a Design Files interview – Thanks Stephen!
This text is an edited version of the original.