Ray Nichols
Wallflowers PRess
Ray is a principal with his wife Jill Cypher in Wallflowers Press, a letterpress shop in Newark, Delaware.
At the start of 2007 Ray retired as professor and director of Visual Communications Group from the University of Delaware where he also coordinated the Advertising Design Program.
Ray's efforts included co-directing the program's study abroad program, five weeks in London each summer, from 2001 - 2005. It was during these London trips taking students to the St. Bride Printing Library, The British Library, The Type Museum, workshops at the Typography Workshop with Alan Kitching, visits to the Royal College of Art, and visiting a number of private presses including one to I.M. Imprint, that Ray and Jill caught the letterpress bug.
Ray, Jill and colleague Bill Deering began purchasing equipment and type and established Raven Press at the University of Delaware. Ray produced a wide variety of work for various parts of the University including the Visual Communications Group, the Center for Material Culture Studies, and the Department of Communication (posters from each are shown below). As a gift to Raven Press the students from the VC class of 2004 talked British graphic designer Alan Fletcher into designing the Raven Press at the University of Delaware logo.
For more than twenty years he has been a principal with his wife Jill in Cypher + Nichols + Design. Through this design studio they have produced a wide variety of projects including corporate identities, advertising, annual reports, posters, logos and Web sites for a number of clients including Direct Radiography, Hagley Museum and Library, Winterthur Museum and Gardens, Delaware Manufacturing Alliance, Alanx, Lanxide, Esquire Magazine and the University of Delaware.
The work produced at C+N+D has been exhibited in a number of national and regional exhibitions and design annuals including the Art Directors Club of New York, The One Club, Graphis Posters, Print Regional, the American Center for Design and the Advertising Club of Delaware.
Through Raven Press and working with Center Director Bernie Herman and his directed writing course during the fall of 2004, Ray helped produce the 108-page documentation of the New London Road Village. With Raven Press co-director Bill Deering he presented a paper at the 2003 national conference of the American Printing History Association illustrating the use of letterpress imagery in contemporary advertising.
Ray and Jill are currently involved with setting up Wallflowers Press and are designing a 300-page book for the City of Newark, Delaware's 250th anniversary.
Illustrations - Top: Year End Show poster for the Visual Communications Group; middle left: poster for the Emerging Scholars Symposium poster for the CMCS; middle right: poster for the Global Agenda lecture series; and bottom: People were close book on the New London Road Community, Newark, Delaware.
Memberships:
Amalgamated Printers Association (APA) | website
American Printing History Association (APHA) | website / Chesapeak Chapter
Vice President, Chesapeak Chapter
Program Committee / Chair
Fine Press Book Association | website
William Morris Society | website
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