The Brooklyn Bridge reimagined in letterpress type

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Structures in Type

My name is Cameron Moll, and I reimagine buildings and structures as if designed entirely with type, such as the Roman Colosseum and the Salt Lake Temple. These are sold as letterpress printed posters, and I’ve been fortunate to ship hundreds of copies to friends in more than 30 countries.

In October 2010, I visited Brooklyn for the first time to study one of the world’s most stunning bridges. I immediately fell in love. Three years later, I launched a Kickstarter project to help fund printing of the artwork. The time spent designing the artwork was more than 300 hours, but the time spent doing research—trips to Brooklyn, studying the bridge, selecting typefaces, thoroughly annotating The Great Bridge—is easily double or triple that amount.

Hidden Meaning

In the artwork, there’s a metric tonne of hidden text: names of the architect, engineers, and laborers that perished; shops and restaurants in Brooklyn; and other items with relation to the bridge.

These are documented in the 24-page booklet.

The spelling of ‘Brooklyn’ was wrong on mine. not sure if this has come up before?

Late Christmas Eve, John Phillips, a Kickstarter backer, sent me this email:

My Brooklyn Bridge poster just arrived and I love it! The spelling of ‘Brooklyn’ was wrong on mine. Not sure if this has come up before?

I thought he was joking. To my amazement and horror, he was not.

The Brookyln heard round the world
This photo was taken on 19 November 2013 as the poster was being printed. That same day, I posted it to a combined audience of more than 50,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter. Not a single person noticed the typo—or at least no one spoke up about it.

Apparently the typo had been in the artwork nearly since day one, as the title is one of the first things I add when starting a new piece—it’s usually the easiest thing to figure out. Hundreds of times I had looked at the artwork and never noticed it. I even kerned the title’s characters by hand on more than one occasion and didn’t pick up on it.

Thankfully, many of the 587 Kickstarter backers—a majority of which had already received their poster with the typo—took the news remarkably well. Their encouragement kept my spirits high in what would have otherwise been a disastrous situation.

After much contemplation, I chose to give backers the opportunity to return their poster for a corrected version or keep the copy they had. Many of them chose to keep the typo version. None of the shipped (or returned) copies with the typo were destroyed and are included in the 1,500 copies of the poster that are available.

Numbers 1–650 & 801–806 contain the typo

Numbers 650–800 & 807–1500 reprinted with “Brooklyn” spelled correctly

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