A LOOK INSIDE Learn American Calligraphy : The Complete Book of Lettering, History, and Design, by Margaret Shepherd

This book contains a wealth of letter art. Calligraphers who have learned from Margaret Shepherd's 19 other books will recognize and use the detailed model alphabet pages--some 39 in all--to teach themselves the basics of [word]. Casual readers will find inspiration in the hundreds of illustrations and the back-stories from American life. 

Highlight #1. pp 93-106. 

The Fraktur chapter is sprinkled with a dozen tiny hand- drawn ornaments; elaborate illuminated capitals; and step-by-step instructions for making filled letters. The crowning glory, shown at right, is a full-page border by noted Fraktur artist Dennis Stephan; readers can remove it, carefully, from the book and create a beautiful Fraktur document as their own family heirloom. 

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 Goddard. A 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 #4, about John Hancock, from January 26, 2021.) 

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

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 

 

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→.  

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.  

American Calligraphy #20: Thruway exit

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

The apparent slant here comes
 from the camera's angle. 

   These letters have legibility as their immediate aim, with safety as their ultimate purpose. They must be readable instantly at midnight or noon, in rain, fog, glare, or snow, sometimes from half a mile away. As highway speeds got faster in the 1950s and 1960s, a car trip demanded ever quicker decisions. Clear, standardized signage replaced local hand lettering to make roads safer and journeys happier. 

Image © SEPS, courtesy of Curtis Licensing.

    Today's interstate signs are the outcome of decades of typographic testing. The letter style, constantly researched, tweaked, and upgraded, balances the uniformity of Block letters against the individuality of Roman. The white or pale yellow-green letters are at least 3" high; upper and lower case is more readable than all-capitals, especially if a and g keep the traditional forms of a and g; reflective glass beads intensify the green background paint (but not the letters, which would tend to blur). Different sign colors and silhouettes alert the driver to other turnoffs for parks, memorials, and services. Visual clutter was further reduced by the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which tightly controlled ads on federal highways. 

    Next time you take your exit in a blizzard at night without panic, you can thank the designers who spent decades creating the pages and pages of federal specifications that made those highway signs so easy to read.  

American Calligraphy #19: Cooper

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

The pen requires three basic
angles [see alphabet below}

This alphabet is the serif version of the "National Parks" style from last week. Still a popular (if not exactly fashionable) typeface, Cooper Black, is derived from it. It is written with a Speedball D oval nib that reduces the contrast between thick and thin strokes, which also rounds off the stroke ends and shapes the serifs. 

Cooper Black was the alphabet of choice for 
candy wrappers and much, much more.  

I love writing these letters. The serifs look like plump little feet or baked potatoes or--in self-reference--little Tootsie Rolls. 

There is a nice graphic detail in the 2004 movie "Napoleon Dynamite," where the hero's nerdiness is summed up in his hand-made T shirt slogan made up of iron-on Cooper letters 

My daily alphabets blog offered six versions of this style to
copy in 2013.  Do a search on "coopy calligraphy" or go to 
 my blog for these dates: June 2, June 25, November 12,
November 20, November 23, November 27.   

American Calligraphy # 18: National parks

This plump, sturdy alphabet was in fashion 1920-1970. If you fattened up an alphabet of elegant, thin, worldly Art Deco, it would look like this. The contrast between thick and thin strokes is reduced, and the stroke endings are slightly rounded. 

These letters were popular for decades in packaging, posters, and signage. In addition, they coincided with a period of expansion in America's national parks. To survive outdoors in sun and rain, the letters were usually routed out of brown-painted wood and then painted white or sky blue. 

A classic landmark for visitors and locals in Eastham, Ma.
Like many such signs, it has recently been replaced with
metal; I feel like a beautiful old tree got cut down. Look
around you for these treasures while they still survive.
Photo, thanks to the Cape Cod National Sea Shore. 

Today, as the weather and public health begin to improve, national parks are appealing to American weekenders and vacationers. In addition to natural beauty, parks offer signage that traces a century and a half of learning about the land.  

As you  watch for interesting signs, remember that in America, state parks typically follow their own templates for letter styles, materials, and colors. 

American Calligraphy #17: The Funnies, part 2

Throughout the 20th century, mainstream cartoonists wrote in a brisk alphabet of all-capitals. 

They could chose from three kinds of pen strokes:  

1. Shown in red: Contrasting thick and thin strokes of a flat pen held at a steep angle. 
2. Shown in black: An oval Speedball D pen with moderate contrast between thick and thin. 
3. Shown in blue: A monoline of uniform weight. 

(A few cartoonists did their lettering with a tiny brush.)  

A grab-bag of lettering styles from a typical 
daily newspaper page of funnies,
mainly in monolines here.  

Cartoons benefit from hand-lettering's expressive strengths. Each cartoonist's lettering establishes a personal voice, which can be varied with heavy letters and italics for emphasis, large sizes for shouting, small letters for whispers, a 'grawlix' (!@#$%&*?) for cursing, and occasionally a whole different letter style for a foreign accent. Even the shape of a speech or thought bubble can add meaning. 

Toward the end of the 20th century, a few cartoonists who felt overworked or tire of lettering began to save time by delegating the task to an assistant or using digital type. Some historians believe that this is the origin of the now-overused Comic Sans type style. 

American Calligraphy: #16 The Funnies

Similarly, symbols for speech
issue from the mouth of a Mayan
warrior as early as 650 CE.   

"Speech scrolls" contain the words of angels and
prophets in 9th-13th century European miniatures. 

Cartooning, the art of combining words with pictures, seems to be universal. Although it has roots in the Old World, it also appears in the New World long before Columbus (above).  Cartoons, like the other arts, a special window into the way Americans live and think. 

Cartooning--first intended to teach or amuse--was sharpened into a political weapon during the heated era of the American Revolution. Left, this 1775 cartoon, attributed to Ben Franklin, is considered the first American political cartoon. Today's editorial cartoons continue this tradition. 

The 1905 debut of "Little Nemo", by Winsor McCay, (1866-1934) was a milestone in the evolution of cartoons into creative art. His letters were not only interesting and beautiful, but they interacted with the characters, adding self-reference in thought-provoking ways. Right, the repeated words "ouch" jostle against each other to be heard. 

The huckster P T Bridgeport spouts
his exaggerations in letters that
sound like an old circus poster.  

Another virtuoso who played with letters, Walt Kelley (1913-1973) excelled at using letters to evoke a tone of voice.  

 

To be continued next week...

with three ways to write cartoon letters.  

2nd day/week? 

Throughout the 20th century, syndicated cartoonists wrote
in a  brisk alphabet of all-capitals. Captions and speech in cartoons can be hand-lettered three basic ways: [▢▢▢ draw diagrams] 

• Thick and thin strokes of a flat pen held at a steep angle. 
• An oval Speedball D pen with moderate contrast. 
• A monoline of uniform weight. 

(less common: a thin brush) 

Above, a grab-bag pf monoline lettering from a typical daily newspaper page of the funnies shows a range of personal styles. I've collected many examples here https://hu.pinterest.com/shepherdscribe/amcallig-ii-funnies-calligraphy/

Cartoons take advantage of calligraphy's strengths. Each cartoonist's letters is unique, varying from heavier letters and italics for emphasis, larger sizes for shouting, smaller letters for whispers, a "grawlix" (the typographic term for cursing: ☠️@#$%&?!), and occasionally a whole different alphabet style for a foreign accent. Even the shape of a speech or thought bubble can add meaning. 

Toward the end of the 20th century, a few cartoonists who felt overworked or just tired of lettering began to save time by delegating the task to an assistant or to digital type. A legend cites this as the origins of Comic Sans type.    https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/typefaces/story-of-comic-sans 

American Calligraphy: Roman capitals

The USA initials shown above
are derived from capitals that
were written with a flat brush
and then V-cut into marble.
The grooves could be accented
with red paint or gold leaf.

Edward Catich (1906-1979) meticulously re-examined the Trajan column inscription in Rome, using large photographs and detailed rubbings. For 2000 years, calligraphers and typographers have periodically refreshed their own Roman letters by referring back to these iconic capitals.  

Father Catich taught the art of calligraphy for 40 years at St Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. "Art is not freedom from discipline, but disciplined freedom." 

zz

Right: Roman letters carved from slate and hand-framed by Father Catich. The gold letters here represent the original imperial Roman letters, the red letters were either not part of the alphabet in 113 CE or did not exist at the time, such as J, U, W. 

Photo courtesy of Paul Herrera. 

Left: Father Catich painting the letters of his own cast of the Trajan inscription.  Photographer unknown. 

American Calligraphy #14: Ambigrams for April Fools Day

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

These ambiguous figures debuted as "inversions" by Scott Kim (b 1955-) in his 1981 book of the same name, and by John Langdon (b 1946-). Then they were re-named "ambigrams" by Douglas Hofstadter (b 1945). Philosophically resembling palindromes, they perform the seemingly magical trick of being readable in at least two directions. Their capacity to be two words at once, or to keep being themselves when upside down, derives from a quirk of the Roman lower-case alphabet, which lets one letter transform into another when it is rotated ⤿ or flipped →. 

For instance: b ⤿ q.  d ⤿ p.  n ⤿ u.          b → d.  p → q.

No other writing system in the world has quite this peculiarity. Also, ambigram designers stretch and squeeze other pairs of letters that almost resemble each other when rotated or flipped: 

For instance: e ⤿ a.  V ⤿ A.  N ⤼ Z.  s → z.   h ⤿ y.  f ⤿ j.  

This ambigram reads "alphabet" either way. 

A symmetrical alphabet
by Scott Kim. 

This ambigram personal logo
reads '"margaret" one way and 
"shepherd" when rotated 180°. 

Many names and logos can be pushed and pulled into forms that, when inverted, resemble themselves or another readable word. Look for the pairs shown above, and don't try too hard to transform short words into long words.

American Calligraphy #13: The sight of music

While early 20th-century American companies were pioneering recorded music, talented graphic artists were  creating covers that helped sell them to an expanding public. Designer Jim Flora, (1914-1998) for instance, was famous for covers where the letters seemed to dance. His style made the rhythms of South American music visible--and irresistible--to potential customers for more than two decades. Everyone loved his catchy style, generating so many imitations that his website even had to include a section called "Not Jim Flora".

The letters "USA" above are
inspired by "Samba with Cugat"
and "Tango with Cugat." 

 Eventually the album covers of the 1950s became today's collectors' items. They offer a wealth of gorgeous graphic design from a century of American music. 

 

American Calligraphy #12: Irish letters

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

People with hyphenated identities have a lot of company in America. Here, for instance, there are more people of Irish descent than in Ireland itself--seven times more! This goes up even higher on St Patrick's Day, when it seems that the whole US is Irish. 

Generations of Irish immigrants have cherished many customs from the old country, including neighborhood pubs. Like ethnic restaurants everywhere, they declare their origins with logo designs in their own alphabet styles. All over Boston, where I live, green and gold signs welcome in a convivial crowd of celebrators wearing green. Many of them will spend the evening watching the broadcast of their favorite basketball team, the Celtics of course. 

But celebrating national customs is not just about the Irish. Every immigrant adds to American life, enriching the tapestry. By celebrating each others' holidays, writing in each others' letters, we make our world.  

Links to whole alphabets from earlier in this blog: 

• Project (with Celtic border to print out), March 17, 2013: 
• Celtic color and line: Sept 19, 2013: 
• Super Celtic March 16, 2013. 
• Some Celtic initials to color in: 

For more borders and capitals, see George Bain, Celtic Art: the methods of construction. 

Also, see borders in Borders for Calligraphy: and read a chapter of insight and instruction in Learn Calligraphy. 

 

American Calligraphy #11: Typewriter

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

Letter bars on early typewriters
 often went out of alignment. 
Ribbons dried out, picked up
dust, and needed re-inking.
Today, it looks "antique."
  

Although 19th-century European and English inventors tinkered with contraptions for mechanical writing, America eventually took the lead with a cluster of crucial patents. 1876 is considered to be the birth of the typewriter. The expanding market brought these machines into homes, schools and offices. 

For almost a hundred years, each typewriter letter had to be the same width, and did not support refinements like varied stroke width, font choice, or sharp serifs until the 1961 IBM Selectric offered type balls and mylar ribbons. 

Although these letters are not exactly fine art, calligraphers can re-create classic typewriter letters and their era from my post of January 9, 2013, using the Speedball B pen nib or a bull-nose marker. It's challenging to over-ride your own good instincts about spacing, and it re-creates a recently vanished era. (And it actually is a robust, useful alphabet style.) 

People older than 70 may remember some work-arounds from the early days. You added two spaces after a period; used a capital O for a zero; substituted a small l for the numeral 1; and superimposed a slash on a c for the cents sign (wait a sec; who even uses a cents sign now?). A brief exposure to early typewriters will remind you to thank your lucky stars for Spellcheck, Undo, and the Delete key. 

Here are some delightful images from the past. 

Detail from a typist's diploma designed in 1921 and awarded in 1944, with a Gothic Revival
headline and a mix of a dozen other letter styles--handwritten and typeset and
 hand-stamped. At the top, the typewriter is glorified as a holy icon. 
The French headline and maple leaf heading remind us that it is from Canada. 

In another detail, a vignette shows the
"muse of stenography" inscribing a scroll. 

American Calligraphy #10: Neon

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

Neon capitals. 

Introduced to the US in 1923, neon lighting had spread from New York City to Las Vegas by the 1930s, to become synonymous with America's flashy advertising and glamorous nightlife. 

Gradually eclipsed by today's programmable giant screens, "classic" neon signs show the designer's ingenuity in transforming glass tubes into letters. Many neon signs imitate continuous lines of connected script, while individual capital letters can either be made with separate segments or the lines are "interrupted" with heavy black paint.  

It's fun to look carefully at signs made of neon tubes, and see how each one solves the fundamental design challenges. Keep your eyes open and pay attention to surviving examples of this luminous art. Each one is custom-made. A recent book, Almost Lost Arts, profiles a handful of remaining artisans who are dedicated to preserving old neon signs as historic national treasures. And when you're next in Las Vegas, visit the Neon Museum (or take a virtual tour, though it charges a fee)

American Calligraphy #9: Wild West wood

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

These letters are built up out
of 2 simple serifs, 2 curved
horizontal strokes, and
a square tilted at 45°.

This late 19th-century type was carved from blocks of America's plentiful hardwood, better-suited than metal for making large letters because metal does not cool evenly at sizes over one inch. In addition, America's plentiful softwoods provided cheap pulp to make poster-size paper. The western expansion that followed the Civil War brought these styles to many new printing shops along the frontier, making the iconic "WANTED: Dead or Alive" poster an emblem of the wild West. even though the frontier was steadily turning from a place into myth. 

    Wild West is made of a few basic strokes. Here's how they fit
together.  

The letters for this 2011 exhibition at Columbia
College, New York, make a dramatic display of
this alphabet's scalability; they are still the largest
printable  type in the world, now housed at
Hamilton Wood Type Museum,Two Rivers,
WI. Photo courtesy of Nick Sherman.

This cartoon spoofs the macho image of Wild
West letters. Source: New Yorker Cartoon
Bank, TCB-138085. Artist Ariel Molvig.