History of Getty-Dubay
“Inga and Barbara deserve the thanks of every teacher and parent … It’s a breakthrough at last!”
Betty Edwards, Ph.D.
Author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Getty-Dubay Italic began in 1979 as the collaboration between two like-minded educators. Both Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty are artists, calligraphers and teachers. They recognized the need for an alternative to the then-traditional system for learning handwriting. Getty and Dubay set about creating instruction books for children — all handwritten — that were soon widely adopted by schools. A handwriting book for adults came in 1991, as well as two instruction books on calligraphy. Today, Getty-Dubay Italic is in use in business and education throughout the United States and internationally.
Getty and Dubay have offered 170 Rx for Handwriting Success seminars for medical professionals across the United States, and also have presented at the World Health Organization in Copenhagen, Denmark and the International Patient Safety Conference in Florence, Italy. Each, as an artist in her own right, has taught handwriting and calligraphy as faculty in schools and colleges in the Pacific Northwest.
Meet the Authors
Barbara Getty, B.A., M.A.T., was an adjunct professor at Portland Community College where she taught calligraphy and handwriting from 1969 to 1999. She was an elementary school teacher for fourteen years and also taught at Portland State University and Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
Inga Dubay, B.A., was an adjunct professor at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, Oregon where taught calligraphy for 25 years, and was Books Arts Department Head for six years. She taught handwriting in public and private schools for thirteen years and has spent countless additional volunteer hours with children in public school classrooms.
Getty and Dubay have written eleven books to bring beauty and ease to the everyday act of writing. They began their mission in 1979 to provide a new, viable handwriting system for children with the seven developmentally appropriate workbooks that make up the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series. These books and accompanying Instruction Manual are now in use in many schools and thousands of homes in America and abroad. From their decades of experience helping adults change or improve their handwriting, they created the self-guided instruction book, Write Now: the Getty-Dubay program for Handwriting Success.
The legacy of their mentors in calligraphy, including that of Lloyd J. Reynolds, is in evidence in all their books, especially in their calligraphy instruction book for adults, Italic Letters. Dubay has also authored a calligraphy book for students, Getty-Dubay Italic Calligraphy for School & Home as a companion to the Italic Handwriting Series. This book is the product of an unique program by Reed College to bring calligraphy into elementary school classrooms (read more here). All Getty-Dubay Italic books and supplementary materials are printed and manufactured in the USA.