Tuesday, July 13, 2021

American Calligraphy #26: The spaces

I'm blessed with beautiful letters to see in my neighborhood. But this means I can't avoid seeing the un-beautiful letters too, or more often the awkward spaces between the letters. When Boston threw itself into the Gothic Revival in the later 19th century, its Roman lettering suffered. Shown here is a cautionary example of all the inscriptions that could have been better spaced. 

The spacing looks good enough until you focus between T and M; U and A; E and R. 

I like to keep in mind the artistic principle, variously attributed to Mozart and Debussy among others,"The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them." Calligraphers too know that the spaces between the letters are where the beauty lives. 

Enjoy the letters around you and the spaces between them. 



Sunday, July 4, 2021

American Calligraphy #25: The Declaration of Independence

 ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America’s most distinctive calligraphy styles. 

Because the text refers to the
colonies as the "united States
of America," I have used a
small u above rather than
making a capital U

When the drafters of this document met in Philadelphia to declare their independence from England's King George III, they commissioned fellow delegate Timothy Matlack (1736-1829) to pen the final copy because he had the best handwriting. 

The Declaration was read aloud the next day, but the 200 typeset and printed copies, printed immediately and distributed to the other colonies, were what really spread the word. Some 26 of the first printing still survive. The second printing was typeset by Baltimore postmaster Mary Katharine GoddardA later version was distributed in German, still the first language of many immigrants. The delegates' signatures were gradually added to the original document over the next month, and completed on Aug 2. (See my blog post #4about John Hancock, from January 26, 2021.) 

The handwritten, signed Declaration of Independence is preserved in the National Archives Museum in Washington DC.  


Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Vacation for the self-employed

 I'm going to pause this blog while I go on vacation. Bye. 

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

American Calligraphy #24: Handmade protest signs

ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America's most distinctive calligraphy styles. 

Handmade signs combine two distinctive American obsessions: do-it-yourself and expressing your opinion. Together they make art that communicates with a special voice. 

A Shahn poster memorializing controversial
anarchistsSacco and Vanzetti. 
Ben Shahn (1898-1969), who immigrated from Lithuania, was trained in both classical and Hebrew calligraphy. He admired the grassroots letters of American amateurs, using them to give his work unique immediacy. His letter designs appeared as posters, book covers, and type fonts.  


Ben's Folk type, a font that he inspired.
Ben Shahn's ideas gave voice to other political advocates for social justice, and engendered dozens of typefaces, while inspiring a generation of graphic designers such as Mary Corita and Lorraine Schneider.
 

Protest letters let people carry a
sign that speaks in their own voice. 
Iconic anti-war poster
by Lorraine Schneider 
 





Tuesday, June 1, 2021

American Calligraphy #23; Brands

 ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America’s most distinctive calligraphy styles.

Modern version of iron for
branding barbecued steaks...
In the far southwestern territories of the American continent--and long before they joined the nation--Spanish settlers were pioneering the American concept of logo design. From the early 16th century, they turned their cattle loose on the unfenced range to graze, with each owner's mark burnt into its hide to identify it at round-up time. 

The word "brand" has roots in the terms for sword, torch, and burnt branch, (old English bærnan). Although today a super-cold, cryogenic branding iron has made branding somewhat more humane, some herd owners now opt for the more-humane practice of ear-tagging. 

The brand designs used by Spanish cattle herders evolved into evocative symbols for the frontier era and the cowboy West. No dude ranch or steakhouse is complete without its iconic branding iron design. The abstract idea of branding, itself, has vastly expanded to become a key concept in American life. A product's brand has become a commodity with a residual value. 

A design language describes the letters and symbols of cattle brands. The letters can look like they are lazy [lying down], dragged, walking, and tilting. like many logos, they pack a lot of personality into a simple glyph. 


Tuesday, May 25, 2021

American Calligraphy #22: Carved slate

 ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America’s most distinctive calligraphy styles.

"He spake well who said that 
graves are the footprints of angels." 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It will soon be Memorial Day, when we pay special attention to graveyards. The gravestone shown below is one of America's very earliest, carved for Ann Quinsey, who died at the age of 13 in Boston 1676. What little we know about her is summed up in this article. To preserve the headstone, it was moved from its original location to the portico of the new building that Old South Church built in Back Bay in 1872. 

17th century gravestone, Old South Church, Boston, Massachusetts. (Ann Quinsey appears in some documents as Ann Quincy.) The plaque measures about 15' x 16". 

In the first years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, people had to accomplish a wide range of jobs with only the talents, and tools, that they brought with them. Sadly, the harsh climate and difficult logistics meant that one of their first tasks was to bury and commemorate the dead. These earliest American carvers were amateurs, repurposing stone masons' chisels to carve letters into local slate or sandstone. Probably working from memory or from printed type in books, they made letters that show great creativity and care. The letters here have the elegance of sincerity, with lovingly added serifs and swashes that attest to a sensitive connection with the person who died

I like to stop by now and then to look again at this exquisite memorial. I hope you will give the same kind of attention to gravestones in your neighborhood, which hold treasures and tell stories. American stories

This is the way people
used to abbreviate "the."
In an effort to plan the spacing of their words, 17th-century carvers relied heavily on contractions such as dec(ease)d; they linked letters by sharing strokes as in ANN; and they used the archaic Y-shaped thorn for th→ 



Tuesday, May 18, 2021

American Alphabets #21: License plate

ABCs of the USA: The stories behind America’s most distinctive calligraphy styles.  

   I love the letters on license plates. Everything about them is engineered to resist the mud, salt, rust, bumps. and flying gravel that they encounter 8 inches above the road. Although designs varied widely from state to state in the early decades of "motoring," license plates now share many standardized visual traits: 6" x 12" size; baked enamel finish; embossed letters and raised borders; letters and numerals 3" tall; state names and mottoes in smaller letters.  
    Numerals may have extra serifs to distinguish them from each other and from letters; also they are generally separated from the letters by a hyphen. Special number-selection protocols designate state officials, police, veterans, rentals, electric cars, or counties. Vanity plates are popular with drivers (1%-16% varying by state) who pay extra for the privilege of spelling out messages in tiny graphic gems as terse as haiku. 
Children who travel on long journeys can collect an alphabet of letters  from license plates, or look for all 50 states. 
Today, New Hampshire's "Old Man of the 
Mountains" continues as the state's symbol even
though in reality the cliff side collapsed in 2003. 
    Calligraphers who want to spoof this robust, eye-catching alphabet can practice it with a bull-nose marker or Speedball B nib. Its basic rounded-rectangle shape requires a little practice, but then it also can form the backbone of other distinctive styles. Anywhere you want to create a style that feels indestructible, use these letters.  

Writing dark letters on a gray background (above left) lets you add white highlights to mimic raised letters.