Amy Papaelias

Type Nerd & Design Educator

Alphabettes Soup

  • Alphabettes Soup: Feminist Approaches To Type. The book celebrates a decade of feminist approaches to type research, design, and creative community-building. The book blends key articles from Alphabettes platform with original essays, exploring intersections between culture, language, business practices, technology, and type. Designed by Tereza Bettinardi. Published in April 2026 with Bikini Books.
  • BUY THE BOOK via Draw Down Books, the Bikini Books site, or at any of these fine book stores distributed through Idea Books!

    • Speaking

  • I am speaking and giving a workshop at Common Groud: a symposium on shaping tomorrow's design culture, at University of Connecticut on Nov. 6, 2026.
  • My talk, "Care and Complexity: Recipes for Alphabettes Soup" at Typographics 2026 on June 26, 2026, can be viewed here.
  • June 12: Alphabettes Soup Countersession at A—Z Presents in Berlin, featured several authors and contributors!
  • Alphabettes from A-Z, at PrintRoom in Rotterdam, May 27, 2026 (I was there, virtually).
  • Alphabettes Soup soft launch at the Bikini Books world headquarters in Porto, April 2026!
  • More Alphabettes Soup launch / speaking events coming soon! Reach out if you're interested in hosting something fun.

    • Recent writings

  • Read an excerpt of my interview, “Reputations: Veronika Burian” published in the Winter 2026 issue of Eye Magazine.

    • Scholarship Design:

  • What Scholarship Looks Like. An on-going collaborative research project with Jessica Barness on the design of academic journals.
  • Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities. A special issue of Visible Language journal. Co-editor with Jessica Barness. Publication: December 2015.

    • About

    Hello! I'm Amy. I am an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the State University of New York at New Paltz, teaching courses in web and interaction design, as well as 2D design and visual communication. I received my MFA in Intermedia Design from SUNY New Paltz and my Bachelor of Art in English Cultural Studies from McGill University.

    Presentations about my research and design pedagogy include: Type@Cooper West, Typographics, the Type Directors Club, Printing History Association, TypeCon, the AIGA Design Educators Conferences, among others.

    I served on the organizing committee of the AIGA Design Education Conference, Converge: Disciplinarities and Digital Scholarship (University of Southern California, 2017), and participated in One Week | One Tool, an NEH-funded Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities (George Mason University, 2013). Jessica Barness and I received the 2017 Design Incubation Communication Design Education Award in Published Research for our special issue of Visible Language (49.3).

    I am a founding member of Alphabettes and editor of Alphabettes Soup: Feminist Approaches to Type (Bikini Books, 2026).

    Get In Touch

    @fontnerd | hello [at] amypapaelias [dot] com | LinkedIn

    Newsletter

    Sign up for my newsletter, What's Cooking: Alphabettes Soup, for infrequent book-related news and events.

    Older stuff

    An archive of things from years’ past.

    Colophon

    This site was hand-cobbled together with 💖 and currently uses Adelle Sans for the headlines and Eskorte for the body text.