Countdown

We're at the end of 2013, after some 314 alphabets and 52 projects.  I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have. 

Here is a column of numerals to help you count down to 2014 tonight. 

See you in the new year, for something completely different, once a week.  Keep writing.   

307 Bookhand D nib with serif

This simple alphabet is the basis for a type style I'm collaborating on.  The diagonal letters aren't done yet.  Now I'm working on the details.  

306 ThereThere caps

These caps go with ThereThere, #281 from November 29.  They are based on slightly squared circles, or if you prefer, slightly rounded squares (the way an old TV screen used to be).  

305 Squarif

This oddball script works better for some letters and words than for others.  Note the precision required to overlap the squares with the stroke ends.  I've presented the letters in letter families.  

Kwanzaa

This alphabet relates to Kwanzaa with its flowing lines and color scheme.  Since the holiday was invented recently, and its traditions are up for interpretation, you might like to play around with it.  It's kind of a type design, with interchangeable strokes that hold the style together.  Enjoy.  

303 Split swash

Sorry about black squares; new operating system and it has changed my editing program.  

This pretty alphabet can be left blank or filled in with color.  

Addressing project

Only part of an alphabet today, culled from the real world.  My daily mail is a real treat, especially at Christmas.  Here is a typical arrival, from Bryan Platte, who is a master of the Copperplate hand.  

301 Last minute projects

I just dashed these off.  I think you can come up with a better O and S and X and Y.  

'Tis the season of last minute gift tags & thank-yous & place cards (and in my family, of coupons written out to stand in for the presents we thought up but didn't have time to shop for). Here are tomorrow's Pretty Caps to add eye appeal to your plain Italics.  

I've given you leaf swashes on some of the strokes; I'm sure you can come up with other ways to add flourishes.  

300 Winter solstice

The A is shown with an outline to remind you of the edges that your mind creates.  

Today the nights stop getting longer and head back to a reasonable level.   So here is an alphabet made by shadows.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet. 

299 Super Stencil

These are grouped into families to make their design clearer.  

This alphabet will help you label things.  Big things.  Over and over.  The two-segment strokes mean that your stencils won't wear out with repeated use. 

298 Rose

Rose is built on the structure of Edelweiss.  Note the mix of petal-shaped strokes with straight construction lines. 

You'll find that this alphabet is most useful only a few letters at a time, since not all the letters fit the template comfortably.  Single initials can be set on a stem, where you can add yesterday's little strokes to imitate thorns.   
   

297 Sprouts

Sprouts lets you add richness to the texture of simple Roman.  The little strokes are slightly curved and overlap the vertical stroke as shown in the small diagram.  
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296 Bookhand for type

I've been trying out one of my favorite calligraphy alphabets with an eye to turning it into a type face. It's making me look really hard at its structure, proportions, and stroke endings and try to analyze things I've been doing by instinct.  Here's where I am currently, showing the 6th iteration .  

Specs: Letter body 5 1/2 pen widths high.  Speedball D nib, with line contrast of about 7 to 11.  Pen angle 35°.  Real size, 1 1/4" high.  I've marked with pencil the areas I need to look at more carefully, things that will need adjusting to make a unified style and fit the letters together.  

Preview of tomorrow's alphabet.  

295 Poinsettia

Remember Leafy Green from last week?  You can turn it into Poinsettia.  Rinse out your pen and write these pointy italics with red ink to imply the Christmas-time flower.  You can add a few green leaves, and make yellow dots to strengthen the illusion.  And notice how to spell this often misspelled word.

Christmas cards, conventional or innovative

Gothic letters are inspiring to design with.  Their medieval flavor is closely identified with Christmas customs, which mainly came from Germany via 19th century England.  But also, their abstract hexagonal shape helps them express creative contemporary calligraphic layouts.  

The greetings above offer two different approaches: a conventional illuminated page with large capital and leafy border, or letters in white falling out of a midnight sky. You can experiment along the whole spectrum from the familiar to the unexpected.  

294 Snowflakes

I love what happens when letters repeat.  In Snowflakes, I have oriented each letter, done in pointy Gothic outline, at a 60° angle around a center point.  Voila! a calligraphic blizzard.  

293 Leafy green

The pointed letter body we saw in Leafy [November 30, #283] can look even leafier in color as Leafy Green. 

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292 Elf dot

Note: I got a little rushed on this alphabet: I forgot to use waterproof black ink for the outlined title.  Red and green watercolor inks made it run.  If you take care, you don't have to make that mistake. 

This is simple: take yesterday's Elf and add a gold dot where red meets green.  

291 Elf

Elf is just a simple nod to "It's Christmas!" Use basic outlined Gothic letters and fill the upper half with green, using a brush or pen.  Let it dry completely.  Wash out your brush or pen.  Then fill in the lower half of the letters with green.  

You could add a gold dot to where the colors meet.  Let's make that modification tomorrow: 

290 Edelweiss

One more variation on Flower Box, an empty outline that suggests the little white flowers of Edelweiss.  Make sure your joins are precise, and don't try to write too many letters.

289 Flora

Flora is a softer view of yesterday's Flower Box.  Like that alphabet, it is shown here in letter families to help you understand its structure.  

I first started designing this alphabet for a friend's landscape architecture firm; her initials MB lent themselves to being merged into one little character and then repeated.  The green color at right adds to the feeling of leaf and petal.  

Fly casual

This little gem shows what you can do to include calligraphy in your life.  Instead of just clicking "reply" to send an RSVP to a party, my friend Allison whipped out a marker, wrote this message on mica, and mailed it in the mail.  What a treasure!  It's going onto the Christmas tree shortly, and will become a real heirloom as well as a classroom example of enjoying the moment.  

Don't get too fussy about letters.  Just write them, by hand, whenever you can.  

288 Flower Box

Flower Box is a hard alphabet to just sit down and write.  I've broken it into letter groups, but even then, many of the letters don't really lend themselves to the overall principle of squaring off the circle, breaking each side into two strokes, and fitting them together with precision.  You'll probably want to do some of them differently.  
I find that I use this alphabet occasionally in a short word or logo.  

287 D Nib Gothic

This heavy, emphatic alphabet is made by writing basic Gothic with a Speedball D nib pen.  Its difference from a sharply broad-edged nib isn't obvious at first, but it grows on you.  

Churchy

I don't really have a whole alphabet today, but want to share a raised inscription I s on 57th Street during a recent trip to New York. 
Maybe you can derive the missing letters from those here.  


Details below and left.  The Y is unusual. 

286 Back slant Gothic

Back Slant Gothic is an extra-tall version of "Disinclined Gothic" we saw earlier (August 10 # 188).  

285 Very Skinny Coopy

1. Penstrokes at 0°

2. Penstrokes at 0° and at 45°

3. Penstrokes at 0° and 45° and 90°.  As usual, Z is a special case.  

Very Skinny Coopy takes most of the fun out of Coopy (see versions on June 12 #137, June 25 #148, Nov 20 #275, Nov 23 #278) by using an even narrower pen point .  There's such a thing as being TOO thin.  This alphabet can be used when you don't want anyone to notice the calligraphy.  

284 Simple gifts

This is the alphabet for yesterday's design.  I call it Simple Gifts.  It combines informal Italic framework with the line of a D nib and lots of informality.   

Simple gifts

It's the first morning of Advent, when we count down the days until Christmas.  NOT just the shopping days!  Many people spend a lot of energy, love, time, and money on the search for gifts to give; maybe too much sometimes. 

Over the next four Sundays--along with all the carols, scripture, and poems--let's keep in mind the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts."  Words are the simplest but most precious gift we can give, and as calligraphers we have a way to gift wrap our nicest words and present them to the people who mean most to us.  

This month is a good time to give words as gifts, through holiday cards, pretty gift tags, personal notes, favorite quotes.  One Christmas I gave everyone note pads with their names written in calligraphy.  You could put names on cookies (see Frosting, January 27) or make personal decorated signs for a bedroom door.