Collections and archives

The Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection is our comprehensive archive of Isotype materials.  

The collection, gifted to the University by Marie Neurath in 1971,  includes documents, correspondence, published works and artefacts relating to Isotype: its history, principles, working methods, and products.  

Isotype revisited was an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project based on this collection. It continues to attract the interest of researchers across the world.

The Centre for Ephemera Studies holds ephemera collections of global significance, and works to ensure their consistent description and classification. 

To find out more about ephemera, see our A–Z of ephemera. It was designed by third-year undergraduate students to coincide with an exhibition showing material from our Maurice Rickards Collection of Ephemera. 

The Centre works with colleagues from the John Johnson Collection, the Bodleian Library, the Library of Congress and the Université Cergy-Pontoise.

We have a unique collection of printing presses spanning technology from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. 

A print workshop that supports the three main printing processes is available for our students to use.

This important collection includes posters relating to the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 and the National Theatre in the 1970s and 1980s. 

We have many examples of the work of David King, Paul Peter Piech and Edward Wright.

The Non-Latin Typeface Collection contains material relevant to typeface design for world scripts. 

The collection includes a unique set of drawings for typefaces in Arabic, Indian, Thai and other scripts, and documentation that supported the original development of these typefaces. 

It also holds a wide range of examples of printing, including newspapers and ephemera.

This archive contains examples of the work of partners Colin Banks and John Miles, of Banks and Miles.  

Their work was fundamental to the development of the corporate identity of many national institutions. Clients included London Transport, the British Council, the Post Office, British Telecom, the Consumer Association and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.  

The collection includes working drawings and specifications, finished designs, presentations and models, publications, work-related correspondence, as well as a number of slides featuring their work.