Gerald Lange

Gerald Lange is the proprietor and founder (1975) of The Bieler Press, a small printing and publishing firm specializing in studio letterpress, typographic design, and the publication of finely-printed limited edition books and related matter.

In 2005, Lange was chosen to present the Eighth Annual Stephen A. Kanter Lecture on California Fine Printing at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. In 1991, he was selected as the first recipient of the prestigious Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. His publications have also won awards from the Type Directors Club, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, and the Chicago Book Clinic.

In 1985, the University of Minnesota established The Bieler Press Archival Materials Collection to provide and maintain historical documentation of the Press. In support of his early endeavors, Lange was awarded five assistance grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as grants from the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation. He is currently participating in an oral history interview at UCLA Library′s Center for Oral History Research.

Lange has written extensively on typography and the book arts, contributing articles for publications such as Parenthesis (FPBA), book art object (CODEX), Ampersand (PCBA), Printing History (APHA), Guild of Book Workers Newsletter, Counter, Serif, Bookways, and The Typographer. In 2007, he was selected to present a paper on contemporary typography for the 32nd Annual Conference of the American Printing History Association. Lange's monograph Printing digital type on the hand-operated flatbed cylinder press, first published in 1998, is in its fifth edition.

Lange provides instruction at Art Center College of Design (since 2000) and Otis College of Art and Design (since 1997). From 1986 to 1993, he was Master Printer at the USC Fine Arts Press. While at the University of Southern California, he was also editor of the scholarly journal Coranto. Lange has also taught workshops/coursework for Irvine Fine Arts Center (Master Printer Workshop), California Institute of the Arts, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Master classes), Scripps College (Frederic W. Goudy Workshops), Kent State University (Blossom Visual Communication Design Workshop), University of Minnesota, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

From 1990 to 1996, Lange was editor of AbraCadaBrA, the Journal of the Alliance for Contemporary Book Arts, an organization he co-founded in 1987. He was Chairman of the Fine Press Book Association (NA) from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, he founded PPLetterpress, an online forum on investigative, exploratory, and alternative printing and typographic techniques.

Exhibitions of Bieler Press work include Men Over 25: California Edition. Printing Letterpress for Over a Quarter of a Century. Scripps College, 2012; California Printers in the Fine Press Tradition, 1975–2006, Stanford University, 2007; Master Printers, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery/Barnsdall Park, 2006; Books & Books, Otis College of Art + Design, 2005; Matter & Spirit: The Genesis and Evolution of the Book, Wells College Book Arts Center, 2004; Ninety from the Nineties: A Decade of Printing, New York Public Library, 2003.

Institutional collections of Bieler Press work include The British Library, University of California, Columbia University, Harvard University, University of Minnesota, New York Public Library, Princeton University, Stanford University, Victoria and Albert Museum, Yale University.