About Me

Josef Beery

A polymath and autodidact, I studied a broad range of subjects as an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia. My focus was history and the humanities but my studies also included architecture and design. After growing up all over the world as my family followed my father in his service in the U.S. Air Force, I decided I wanted to get to know the life and people of a single community. I settled in my college town of Charlottesville, Virginia and have never left. When my business allowed it, I purchased an old farm house in the mountains of the Blue Ridge not far from town and in the serenity of these mountains my wife and I have raised two children.

Not wanting to leave this community, after college I began a process of self-education in graphic design. I had the pleasure to get to know and work with some very talented folks in this field, most notably the twentieth-century artist, type designer, and book designer, Warren Chappell and the eminent historian, theoretician, poet, and artist, Johanna Drucker. I have worked primarily for institutions and publishers preparing print materials for education and fundraising. In the nineties, the world rushed headlong into a digital revolution. I kept up with these rapid changes by adopting the newest technological innovations in my professional practice, but I simultaneously turned my focus to historic forms of printing. I helped found the Virginia Arts of the Book Center in Charlottesville, Virginia with many energetic artists and friends. The support and encouragement of amateur historian Cal Otto and professional librarian Terry Belanger were seminal in our success. I continued my association with the University of Virginia as a Fellow in Brown Residential College and then extended my interest in working with undergraduates by offering internships to students at Sweet Briar College, fifty miles south of Charlottesville in Amherst, Virginia.

If I can assist you in the design and production of your project, please contact me by dropping me an email.

[This photo was taken by Charlottesville photographer Ashley Twiggs, to see more of her work, check out her website.]