For the Love of Letterforms (Part 1)

Posted on September 22, 2015 by jackstandbridge

It’s competition time again! You may recall that a long time ago in a blog post far, far away I wrote about entering a competition to perhaps get into an elite team of superheroes. Well, okay, it was about 23 weeks ago, and instead of superheroes they are letterers, typographers and calligraphers. The Ligature Collective held a contest for Instagram users to submit their best work of art based around the phrase “Ten Thousand Followers” to celebrate, well, you guessed it, getting up to the 10K mark on Instagram. Long story short, I entered, wasn’t one of the 3 winners, but got an honourable mention, along with 8 other lucky artists.

The End.

Or so we thought until now…

Suddenly, the Ligature Collective Strikes Back with their next competition, this time in celebration of getting 50 thousand followers! I know, that’s 40,000 followers in 24 weeks, which in case you’re wondering, is just about ten an hour, or about one every six minutes. Whew.

This time, the brief was a piece of lettering of the words “For the Love of Letterforms”. The rules allowed unlimited submissions per person, so I thought I may as well go ahead and do as many as I liked. My goal in doing so was to showcase the variety of styles that I’ve become capable of using over the years and come out with several pieces that differ from each other in feel and appearance as much as possible.

With the first, which you can see above, my intention was to design something that was visually very simple. There is almost no flourishing at all on this piece, and the shape of the composition is made simply through the arrangement of the words themselves.

Here’s the second piece I did:

This piece uses a combination of styles, and is reminiscent of the techniques used on old certificates and official documents which employ a combination of heavy blackletter text surrounded by much lighter flourishes and Copperplate accompaniment. The other quite obvious contrast between the pieces is that this one is in gold and white paint on a black background, whereas the other is classic black on white.

Both these pieces, I feel, were a success, and I achieved with them what I had set out to do. The next two, which I will talk about next week, are at great contrast with each other in terms of complexity, but both of which were very popular on Instagram and gathered much attention. Tune in next week to find out what happens! Not only will the next pieces be revealed, but I also will have found out if I got into one of the coveted two available spots on the Ligature Collective team. Fingers crossed!

No Pressure, No Diamonds

Posted on August 17, 2015 by jackstandbridge

When do you think you produce your best work? Is it when you have all the time in the world to plan and tweak and refine? It has been said that work expands to fill the time allotted, and if you’re a perfectionist, I’m sure you would agree that there’s an element of truth in the saying. It’s also said that you never grow if you never stray from your comfort zone. If your ideal working scenario is comfortable and calm with endless time, it could be that you would benefit most from denying yourself that environment. After all, no diamond was ever created where there was no pressure.

No Pressure, No Diamonds! What does it mean? It means something enough to one person to have it emblazoned on their skin, in fact. This was a client commission for a tattoo that I wanted to share with you for two reasons. The first is to show off my process for tattoo design, and the second is because the subject matter is oddly fitting in this case. The brief for the piece, that is the words themselves and the layout, didn’t seem to lend themselves well to any of the styles that I have been becoming more familiar with. My love for Romans, my penchant for combining styles, tendency to create tiny details in pieces, all were at odds with what this piece needed to be. The text needed to fit within a 11.5 x 6.5 cm space (4.5 x 2.5″), it needed to be well legible at that size, and it needed to (of course) be typographically sound.

Here are some specifications that I included since the piece was being passed from one artist to another (i.e. from me to the tattoo artist who would execute the design):

In the early design stages, I had difficulty coming up with anything that would satisfy my standards. One of the main things I had to tackle was the word length. Two very short words and two quite long words. Just by the nature of the phrase, many design possibilities were taken off the table that would normally be there for phrases with more equal letter distribution. Eventually, I managed to create a small selection of designs that I had some interest in taking further. The client had requested something in a fluid kind of script, but I find it best to explore all available options before continuing because there are often solutions hidden in places that don’t seem obvious at first, and closing doors early on is a great way to get stuck. And getting stuck wasn’t something that I needed any more of with this project.

So what happens at the end of the story? Well, the hero perseveres and comes up with the best design ever, not through luck or coincidence, but through effort and hard work!

Really though, that’s pretty much what happened, minus the hero part. As it turns out, even a project that you feel doesn’t mesh well with your style, or doesn’t seem to fit well with what you would usually like to do can be turned into something you make your own, something you can really put your heart into and work on with as much enthusiasm as any other, and come out at the other end with something you can be proud to write a blog post about.

So one of the reasons I wanted to write about this project in particular was because it was a case where the pressure was on to create a piece that was worthy, and in the end I created a result I was happy with, despite the difficulties, which is kind of the point of the piece I was making. No Pressure, No Diamonds. How meta.

Symmetry

Posted on July 13, 2015 by jackstandbridge

Last week, I posted an ambigram, and several weeks ago, I posted this ambigram. So what’s the deal? This week sees another ambigram, but in fact, it’s the same as an old one! Well, I’m revisiting this ambigram. I wanted to come back to it and give it a little bit of a make over and dedicate some more time to its development. Looking back at the original ambigram, I feel that it served its purpose, but that there was more potential in the design.

So I took this idea back to stage one, which consists of two parallel lines drawn across the paper for the baseline and x-height, and started to redesign it. My main focus was to have more stylistic consistency across the letters, but also to change the style slightly to something that better reflects the meaning of the word. To start with, all the strokes are split into two pieces, and you’ll notice that many of them are mirror images of each other. Take the two strokes that make up part of the M in the centre, for instance (the ones that the crossbar of the T comes to point at,) and you’ll see that if you rotated them 180 degrees, they would form the same shape. This was the fundamental stroke that I designed first, and upon which all the other strokes are modelled. Of course, plenty of tweaking had to take place for each individual case, but starting with a solid stroke form is important.

The style itself is something that leans slightly more towards Gothic than Italic, but is certainly a rounded Gothic with plenty of Italic influence thrown in to arrive at something caught midway between the two. The E, for instance, only works because of its Gothic influence, and the T is far from what you would see in a traditional Italic hand, yet the S and the M’s take more from Italic than they do Gothic, with the Y’s and R being something of both.

My plan, eventually, is perhaps to use this piece in another design. Up until this point, I haven’t done any merchandising of my work, but I can’t help but think that a piece like this would do well on something like a T-shirt or coaster, though perhaps framed differently than how it was in the original Tyger! Tyger! piece, or than how it is on its own here. As ever, finding the perfect way to display an ambigram is a puzzle, but in the end I think that I will find the perfect solution to this piece. I will find the piece that was meant to surround it, complement its letter forms and highlight its symmetry. Until then, however, I will have to amuse myself with experimenting with gouache paint as in the first image, which it seems is a wonder to apply with traditional pointed pen calligraphy tools.

What it means to learn calligraphy.

Posted on April 27, 2015 by jackstandbridge

What it means to learn calligraphy. If you were looking for something about lettering, I’m afraid it’s not the subject this week. The difference between calligraphy and lettering is mysterious to some, but it is significant. Lettering, as with typography, is a different process entirely, though it can often produce a similar result. The modern letter forms that we use today, the ones you read in books, the ones you see on your computer screens, even the ones you write your shopping lists with can be traced back to calligraphy. Calligraphy is the way that information was stored for centuries, and during those centuries, we have had plenty of time to come up with something better. The funny thing is that despite the time we have had to improve upon the forms, we haven’t.

The fundamental root of calligraphy that we know today can be found in capitalis monumentalis, or Roman square capitals. The most famous example can be found in the Trajan column inscription, created some 2000 years ago, which has been a source of inspiration for scribes since.

So what is the significance? Well, for anyone who really wants to understand letter forms, it’s essential study. To look at the source of letters is to understand their construction. To understand the strokes of the brush, the twists of the nib, the order of execution informs everything we know about letters. Have you ever wondered why there are two types of lower case A? One is a single story letter, similar to a lower case D with the ascender chopped off. The other is a two story letter, which has an arm that curls round over its head. The reason is that these two styles stem from difference sources. The two story letter (which you likely see in this text, depending on your computer’s available typefaces) comes from Roman lower case letters, whereas the other is derived from Italic calligraphy. (Some sad type faces, unfortunately, simply have a poor man’s Italic which is made by twisting the Romans into Italic imitations.)

Knowing all this, a letterer would do themselves a disservice not to study calligraphy. But what does it mean to learn calligraphy? What do you need to understand the strokes, twists and anatomy of calligraphy?

Time.

Letter forms that have stood the test of time, that have been available to be changed for centuries yet have stayed the same, that have an undeniable timelessness are simultaneously simple and complex. They are simple in that they convey everything that they need to with utmost legibility. They are complex in that their construction holds such intricacies that seem invisible upon first examination, yet are essential to their successful execution. They are an excellent example of both form and function. With every session of study you can delve a little deeper and discover some of the silent secrets hidden within the works of long dead masters. I recently learnt that having spent over 30 years at the art, one of the calligraphers I admire greatly has returned to studying Romans 6 times, dedicating weeks at a time to the process, and each time teases more subtlety and knowledge from the ancient works.

Is it surprising, then, that it what is truly means to learn calligraphy is time? The time spent studying, the time spent practising, and the time spent contemplating, understanding and progressing.

If you’ve made it this far without much interest in calligraphy, however, and would like some news of lettering, here’s a snapshot of some of the recent daily doodles I do to keep the creative juices flowing:

Don’t be Afraid to Dream

Posted on August 18, 2014 by jackstandbridge

This week is another New-Pen-Week! Last time, I got some Rotring Rapidographs, which I use pretty much the same as the old fine liners I started out with. Not much changed in the style of work I produced, but for me, the process was changed a little. This time, however, I got some Pilot Parallels, which are a kind of fountain pen for broad nibbed calligraphy. I’ve been wanting to start practising some broad nibbed calligraphy for a while now, so that I can further my understanding of Gothic/Blackletter styles, and this week allowed me the chance to give it a go!

I found a wonderful image that displays a style of Blackletter that I haven’t seen reproduced quite the same anywhere else. The title of the image is “Williams Style of German Text”, which doesn’t seem to bring up much other than the original image, so I don’t have much more information than what you see there. I’m sure there is much to learn in exploring the style, and I’m going to spend the next few weeks trying to understand the intricacies of what makes the letters function in the way they do, but in the mean time, I took some inspiration from the style, as well as several other styles I’ve seen around the web, and came up with the piece above.

The pens came with two inks, which was unexpected, but it provided me with the opportunity to experiment with a bit of colour, which is something I’ve been purposefully avoiding in other works in an effort to focus on form. After all, restrictions are what give us guidance, and having too many directions to explore often leads to little progress. That being said, it’s sometimes refreshing to allow yourself a little deviation. These inks are black and red, though refills are available for all manner of colours, so I’m interested in getting some more in the future. In the mean time, I found neat feature on my camera that replaces individual colours in a photo for others, no photoshopping required. Here, I’ve replaced the red ink with a green, blue, and brighter red. Look how each colour creates a different feel for each piece. Colour matters!

The speckles that surround the letters were made by pulling on the tip of the nib, and letting it go, which flicks the ink on to the paper. Unfortunately, it also flicks it everywhere else, so I ended up with some red fingers, pens and surfaces. Before I did the speckles, I first drew out some guidelines for the word “Dream”, then wrote in the red parts. Once they were dry, I went over in black to complete the bottom part of each letter, then added in the Copperplate above with a brush pen. The speckles came in last because I didn’t want to get my hands so messy if I ended up making a mistake and discarding the paper!

Seize the Day

Posted on July 14, 2014 by jackstandbridge

So the lettering subreddit has a weekly challenge for people to participate in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have many contestants, unlike the word of the day on the calligraphy subreddit, which has several submissions every day! That one, however, isn’t a competition, so maybe that makes a difference. Anyway, I think the lettering challenge has few takers because lettering is a pretty lengthy process compared to calligraphy, so it’s quite a time investment to take part. This week, I decided to give it a go.

I only had a couple of days to bash out a piece seeing as I’ve had some client work I’ve been focusing on since the beginning of last week. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to achieve with this piece. Luckily I wasn’t going for any insane level of detail, so finishing it quickly was fairly doable once I had it planned out. My goal was to emulate a style that I’ve often seen with the logos of things like production companies and music studios. The style seems to include a single word in a brush lettering or Gothic style, often done with a liberal amount of flair (dare I say pizazz?) followed by one or two smaller, more sensible, neat Roman words beneath. It typically ends up reading something like “SUCH AND SUCH music studios”, with the such and such being the name. This piece is a little bit of a deviation from the style in that the Roman letters are a little more stylish than what you might usually see, where they are very understated. The reason for that is that this being a lettering piece rather than a logo means that I have more freedom to explore the combination of styles a little further, knowing that it won’t ever need to be sized down to fit on a business card or social media branding.

On a related note, I’m still exploring brush lettering as much as possible, (the aforementioned calligraphy word of the day being very helpful) and I’m thinking of looking into getting some broad nib pens like pilot parallels to explore Gothic styles a little more and expand my knowledge. Understanding a style thoroughly takes a lot of exploration and time, sometimes!

Jack Standbridge

Hand Lettering

Tag Archives: Black letter