Rob Roy Kelly, 78; Graphic Designer Was Expert in Wood Type

Rob Roy Kelly, 78, a graphic design expert who helped revive an interest in wood type, died Jan. 22 in Tempe, Ariz., of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Kelly was the author of the 1977 history of typefaces, “American Wood Type, 1828-1900: Notes on the Evolution of Decorated and Large Types and Comments on Related Trades of the Period.” The same year, he published the book “100 Wood Type Alphabets.”

A former professor of communications at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Kelly amassed his own collection of hard-to- find typefaces and books of historic printing that he obtained from old printers. The collection was sold in the late 1960s to the Museum of Modern Art and later sent to the University of Texas where scholars could study it.

Born in rural Nebraska, Kelly studied design at the University of Nebraska and the Minneapolis School of Art before serving in the Army during the Korean War. He did graduate work at Yale and taught at several institutions including Carnegie Mellon, Western Michigan and Arizona State universities.