Collins music typeface for “The Sacred Harp: 2025 Edition” songbook

Jeff Kellem

A bespoke music typeface I designed as Slanted Hall for the songbook The Sacred Harp: 2025 Edition has recently been announced and named Collins. We first showed examples of the typeface and parts of the book at Camp Fasola in Alabama, 1 July 2025 and presented a class on the history of the book design. Surprised to see a queue waiting for autographs of the Collins Typeface Specimen 18"x12" poster. Nice to see the good reception and how important the book and design is to the community.



Project started in 2020. The ~500 pages of songs have been re-engraved to be released in September at the United Sacred Harp Musical Association 13–14 September 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA with a Forum about the book's revision at Emory University the day before, 12 Sep 2025, where I'll give a talk about the design.

The Sacred Harp songbook was first published in the mid-1800s. It's republished every 30 years or so. Since the community around the world tracks what songs are sung, they know which are popular and not. For each new edition, less popular songs are removed and new compositions are added. So, it's both a historical and a living book. The previous edition was in 1991.

Here's an NPR piece about the book last month (25 Jun 2025) and an AP did a series of pieces (that includes a nice video) at the end of May, though neither had info about the custom type design at that point.



A few sample engraved songs can be seen on the Sacred Harp Publishing Company's post from yesterday. Text typefaces in the book include Optima LT Pro by Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi plus Miller Daily Two and Three by Matthew Carter.

This also hopefully is a sign that I'm reappearing a bit more after disappearing due to the pandemic and grief recovery. I'll be at TypeCon in two weeks. Also, carving out more time for type design and consulting work while helping lead the music society nonprofit ASMAC (American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers).