David S. Rose is a letterpress printer and graphic designer as well as a book collector, writer and teacher on the subject of printing history and typography. He began working with type in the book arts program at Yale University, where as an undergraduate he was a recipient of Yale?s Lohmann Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Printing and Design, as well as the Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prize for his collection on printing and typography. He was also awarded a Robert C. Bates Traveling Fellowship to study the fine presses, binderies and printing museums of Europe.

 

After establishing his first press in New York in the early 1980's he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Center for Book Arts where he taught on the subject of the History of Printing, and is today chairman of the board's Print Shop committee. He later served as a manager of Compuserve's online Book  Collecting and Macintosh Graphics forums. In 2001, he established the Five Roses Press to produce limited edition letterpress works. Its inaugural production was a large-format broadside for The Typophiles concerning Theodore Low De Vinne's views on type design, and its most recent publication is an edition of Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" produced as a tribute to the late Sam Antupit of the Cycling Frog Press.

 

Beginning with the third release of the Fontographer electronic type design application, David authored an annotated historical bibliography of typography expanding on some of his earlier published work, which has been updated and included with each successive version of the program. The bibliography is based on his personal collection of historical printing and typography manuals, which currently comprises over 4,000 volumes. Realizing in 2000 that there was an unmet need for an up-to-date basic guide to the hobby and art of letterpress printing, David began compiling a collection of advice, information and links for new printers that resulted in his online 'Introduction to Letterpress Printing for the 21st Century' (www.fiveroses.org/intro.htm), Google's #1 ranked site for "letterpress printing". A pre-publication reviewer's edition of his book-in-progress by the same title was distributed at the 2003 APA Wayzgoose.

 

For over twenty years David has continued to be closely involved with the book arts at Yale, where he was elected an Associate Fellow of Pierson College, serves as Scribe of the Honorable Company of College Printers, and founded the Carl Purington Rollins Foundation. He is a member of the Typophiles, the American Printing History Association, the Amalgamated Printers Association and the Grolier Club (to which he was nominated by the late Joseph Blumenthal.) He is also a member of the Westchester Chappel of letterpress printers and was one of the designers who contributed to the Font Aid II: September 11 font.

 

A native New Yorker, David has a BA from Yale and an MBA from Columbia. Outside the field of printing and typography he has numerous interests in the academic, eleemosynary, public service and business arenas. He was named by Inc. magazine to the 1998 'Inc. 500' list as CEO of one of the fastest growing private companies in America, and his not-for-profit activities include service on the boards of organizations including People for the American Way Foundation (Washington, DC), The Millennium Society (Washington, DC), and the 92nd Street YM-YWHA (New York, NY), and as an advisor to the Harlem Educational Activities Fund (New York, NY).