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. 

Margaret Shepherd's new book: Learn American Calligraphy

     I'm happy to announce the publication of my new book Learn American Calligraphy, The Complete Book of Lettering, History, and Design, from Skyhorse. Fifteen years in the making, it fills a much needed function to showcase the letters that came to America and evolved, or those who were created here. 

The book takes the casual reader on a visual trip around the United States of the past and future, while calligraphers at all levels of skill will come home with new alphabets to use. 

    For centuries, American calligraphers have accepted the legacy of the classic Roman, Gothic, and Italic calligraphy they inherited from Europe without knowing that there are more alphabet treasures to be found in a larger pool of uniquely American alphabet designs. Wild West, New Deal, Prairie, National Park—all were made in America, and they express ideas that reveal national character. These styles come from here and nowhere else. Much like American music, language, fashion, and philosophy, calligraphy has matured, moved on from its origins, and become, in the words of the man who created Spencerian handwriting, “even more American.” 

Every calligrapher will find inspiration in this book's hundreds of illustrations and dozens of model alphabets. We will be sampling from its hundreds of illustrations and dozens of model alphabets over the year. 

Learn American Calligraphy is available wherever books are sold. 

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 #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." 

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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.