Submissions were fantastic, and some stragglers will be coming in tomorrow and after. Information on B on the next page. Thanks everyone and great job!

JOSHUA HARLESS

KYLO MOONGUTS

XANDRA ZAMORA

NICK SIMSON

CHRIS PIASCIK

EMILY MAHER

FRED MITTELSTEDT

ALEX SAVAKIS

BEN SALAS

DAVE BAILEY

RAND RENFROW

GUILLAUME MUR

PETER KEHR

JOHN KANE SMITH

DAVID WHITLEY

SALLI SUE SWINDELL

ALISTAIR BRIGGS

JILLANTHROPY

JEN MONTGOMERY

CYRILL KUZNETSOV

JASON WONG

ANGELA FICORELLI

RYAN FREASE

PATRYCJA ZYWERT

JESSICA FREASE

JUSTIN BLANKS

DAWID KONIUSZEWSKI

BERTO LEGENDARY

DARREN COLE

DAN GNEIDING

ERIK MARINOVICH

BEEJAY

EKATERINA TIOULEIKINA

BECCA HIRSBRUNNER

GARRY BOOTH

CARL BAHR

OLI SMART

JEREMIE DUCRET

A.C. BANANAS

JONO LEWARNE

LAUREN COMER

TIM CANNY

BRUCE STAINSBY

SUMMER ORDONEZ

BRANDON W. OXENDINE

JUSTIN LEIBOW

CAROLYN SEWELL

RICHARD PEREZ/SKINNY SHIPS

OCULAR INVASION

RAEDIA SIKKEMA ALBINSON

MARTIN HOLM

LISA RIDGELY

DON BULL

JEFF RICKARD

JENNI LEDER

RORY PHILLIPS

ANDREI ROBU

ELEFTHERIA ALEXANDRI

DROUT 750

LOS FOKOS

LEE-ANN DONALDSON

ELYSSE RICCI

So, here’s the skinny for future letters.

DATES

February 15 – February 28 – submit the Letter A. On March 1, we will publish all of them.
March 1 – March 14 – submit the Letter B. On March 15, we will publish all of them.
March 16 – March 28 – submit the Letter C. On March 29, we will publish all of them.

And we’ll continue posting the dates as we progress.

GUIDELINES

• Submit a 600 pixel wide RGB file (flattened, jpg, png, gif) to lettercult //at// gmail.com. You can also upload to the Alphabattle Flickr 2.0 group. And while you’re at it, you can upload your letters to Nate’s LetterPlayground.

• Include a link to your site, if you’d like us to link.

• One submission per person per letter.

• You can make your letters however you choose, with one exception: Don’t use a font as a starting point…this is a site about letters you build from scratch. (wink)

• Keep it safe for work.

• Try to be original, in some way, shape, or form.

• Have fun.

• You can submit a letter after any deadline. We’ll still add it to the group.

LINKS

LetterPlayground

AlphaBattle 2.0 at Flickr

Typophile TypeBattles

There are no actual battles, no talkin’ trash, no smokin’ fools, no winners, no losers—just an opportunity to express yourself with Custom Letters among some like-minded peers.

Make letters. Have fun.

Drout 750, aka Paul O’Sullivan, started AlphaBattle last year as a Flickr group, based on a concept that goes back nearly 10 years to various grafitti forums. This is the reboot, version 2.0.

We’ll start with A, do a new letter every two weeks, and finish with Z, about this time in 2011. Fifty-two weeks, twenty-six letters.

So, here’s the skinny.

DATES

February 15 – February 28 – submit the Letter A. On March 1, we will publish all of them.

March 1 – March 15 – submit the Letter B. On March 16, we will publish all of them.

And we’ll continue posting the dates as we progress.

GUIDELINES

• Submit a 600 pixel wide file (flattened, jpg, tif, gif) to lettercult [[at]] gmail.com. You can also upload to the Alphabattle Flickr 2.0 group. And while you’re at it, you can upload your letters to Nate’s LetterPlayground.

• Include a link to your site, if you’d like us to link.

• One submission per person per letter.

• You can make your letters however you choose, with one exception: Don’t use a font as a starting point…this is a site about letters you build from scratch. (wink)

• Keep it safe for work.

• Try to be original, in some way, shape, or form.

• Have fun.

• You can submit a letter after any deadline. We’ll still add it to the group.

Here are a few things to help get you in the mood.

First, from Jessica Hische, as posted on her blog. A starting point for making letters and thinking about variations.

You could start with a pencil, a pen, a carving knife, a spatula, your toe in the sand. There are countless ways to make your own letters. Some more inspiration.

The letter A at LetterPlayground

Conor & David

Peter Bruhn

Sarah France

Olly Moss

Bryan K. Malley

Raedia Sikkema Albinson

Evan Mathis

Psalmplasma

Ray Fenwick

Brandt Botes

You in?

LINKS

LetterPlayground

AlphaBattle 2.0

Typophile TypeBattles

“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” — Jessica Hische

RIGHT NOW, FOR JESSICA Hische, that work—the work she should be doing for the rest of her life—is making letters.

Right now, she sits at a computer in her Brooklyn apartment, hanging out with her two cats as she chats on the internet.

The cats try their best to stop her from working—blocking access to her mouse, and laying down on her keyboard. But Olive (fat and loud) and Billy (a space cadet who sings in the shower) are prone to constant naps and have not been very successful stopping her.

Indeed, in 2009, Jessica Hische was unstoppable.

She began 2009 as a senior designer at Louise Fili’s acclaimed design studio and went full-time freelance in September; she completed illustrations for a variety of top publications; did tons of amazing lettering, including the new Louise Fili identity; released her first font, Buttermilk, a big success; began selling letterpressed posters; and started a site, Daily Drop Cap, which now gets 2,000 visitors a day.

All this a little more than three years after graduating from Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art.

“Jessica has a can-do approach to absolutely everything,” Fili says. “For her, nothing is insurmountable.”

In 2006, Hische was living and working in Philadelphia, teaching some classes, and establishing freelance contacts. She made a promo to send out for the holidays—the Twelve Days of Christmas, each day illustrated on its own postcard. She sent the promo to 250 magazine and agency ADs, and also to “a few people I thought were awesome,” she says, “including Louise Fili, Christoph Niemann and a couple others.”

Fili was the only one who responded. She asked Hische to come to New York ASAP.

“I had no idea it was for a job interview,” says Hische, who turns 26 in April. “I thought she just wanted to see what the youth of today were doing or something. At the end of the day, she offered me a job and I had to drop everything and move to New York in two weeks.”

Early on at Fili’s studio, Hische showed great potential and proved herself with every new piece. She moved quickly from junior designer to a senior design position, and worked well with Fili, who became her mentor.

“Louise is a true art director,” Hische says. “Her employees (usually just two, a senior designer and a junior designer) are her hands and she is the brain so anything that comes out of the office is fabricated by one of her designers and conceptually developed by Louise.”

Hische crafted logos and designed books, and put in countless hours behind the computer, tweaking beziers, making bowls and tails curve just right. Fili has a large collection of type specimens, and Hische often spent an entire day working with letters—inspired by the fanciful specimens from past eras.

“Anyone can be a good letterer,” she says. “I was able to become so good at lettering because I drew it literally all day, every day, for three years. I would go to work for Louise and draw type all day, then I would go home and work on freelance work or personal projects until 1 or 2 a.m.”

That breakneck schedule was the main reason she wanted to go 100 percent freelance. But leaving Fili’s studio was difficult.

“She has been the biggest influence on my career and work and I still talk to her often,” Hische says. “When I was working for her I was always really impressed with ways she ran the business or how she treated people and clients…she would always be doing nice things for us (her employees) like bringing in pastries for ‘inspiration’ (when I was working on a book about patisseries) and celebrating our birthdays, cooking us lunch on occasion, etc. I hope that when I am a boss, I can be so down-to-earth and thoughtful to my employees.”

Before going freelance, Hische had planned ahead, figured out a budget, and got encouragement from her rep, Frank Sturges, and a blessing from Fili. She went full-time freelance last September, and so far, so good. Hische just hired an intern to help her handle her increasing volume of orders from her online shop.

Congratulations to Jessica Hische, our 2009 Person of the Year!

Do you think an ability to make letterforms is a necessary skill for designer today?

I think its a misconception by people that do custom lettering that it is a skill designers should want or need to learn. I know plenty of designers that are great with type, but terrible at drawing letterforms and don’t really have a desire to learn. This is why fonts exist, for designers who are great with type and can pick appropriate type for projects…I’m a real believer in hiring specialists for what they do best. I wouldn’t expect someone to come to me to design a corporate website, it’s not what I specialize in. I think if you understand what you are best at, and know to hire out when you need to, that is design at its best.”

Clients who come to you know they’ll be getting letterforms built from scratch, typically. What is it that attracts you to doing Custom Letters?

Having complete control with how everything looks and feels. There is a humanity that comes across in lettering that you don’t always get with fonts. You can see the personality in the slight imperfections. It’s the same way that if you take type and print it out and scan it back in. There is a warmth that you get that isn’t there without going through the replication process. Most of the type that I draw, I draw because there isn’t a font that is close enough to what I want. Sometimes I do use fonts in conjunction with lettering if the font is right.

You released your first font, Buttermilk, last year. What was the process like of getting Buttermilk fontified and ready for release?

I had started out as just drawing the alphabet in Illustrator because I had a few characters drawn already. I originally drew the type as a part of a logo presentation that was rejected. I really just made it into a font because I was excited to learn about FontLab. I drew everything in illustrator and then copied the characters into FontLab (I know you type designers are cringing right now). It took me about two months, on and off, to finish kerning it and whatnot, and when it was done, I contacted both Veer and MyFonts about selling it through their sites. MyFonts responded, and I started selling it a month or so later.

Are you considering releasing more fonts?

Hopefully! Type design is a very involved and tedious process. You forget about all of the accent characters, punctuation, etc. that are essential to a well-made font. I still feel like a novice in FontLab…so, yes, I definitely plan to do more fonts in the future, it’s just been hard to find the time to focus on type design with my freelance work.

You’re a perfectionist with your letters and your illustrations. When did you realize this?

One of the main reasons I started doing lettering is because I felt that fonts weren’t quite right with design projects I was working on in school. I knew that it wouldn’t feel perfect unless the lettering and the image and the design all matched perfectly. From the beginning I worked toward making things as good as I could and as my skills developed, I could make them better and better. Everything you put into the world is representative of you, and I would never want someone to see that one piece that I slacked on and think that it was the best I could do.

What was your inspiration for Daily Drop Cap and what kind of response have you gotten?

I really wanted to challenge myself to do something every day or every week after I left my day job. When I was working a day job, and doing freelance, I just didn’t have any time for personal projects so I wanted to take advantage of my new freedom. I originally wanted to do an alphabet per week but realized this was a bit ambitious after the freelance started to clog up my calendar, so I settled on a letter per day. The response has been amazing. I get so many Google alerts of people blogging about it or implementing it into their site. In the first month, the site had 90,000 visitors and it’s been holding steady at 60,000 per month since (which doesn’t count RSS feed subscribers).

Considering you were a student not too long ago, was it weird to start getting so many e-mails from students?

It was, though I think the main reason I get so many of those e-mails is because I’m so young. Students want to know how they too can fast-track their career and the most popular questions I’m asked are “What did you do to start getting so much work?” “How did you start working for such great companies?” “What can I do to start doing work like you?” etc. It’s hard to answer these questions because really what worked for me isn’t going to work for everyone. I got my rep when I was just out of college, mostly because I knew a few people already represented by him. I had the amazing opportunity of working at a job where I got to do really creative work all the time, and develop a skill (lettering) that not everyone does, and that had just come into major popularity in the last few years. I moved to New York and fell into a group of friends that were really motivating. What I do is kind of specific, illustration and lettering with a graphic design background, and I don’t really know what to tell young designers that aren’t interested in illustration how to promote themselves and get work. The three disciplines are all very different and for me they all came together in a great way.

Can you recall a time when you first really noticed letters?

I think the first time I really noticed letterforms was when I was learning cursive writing in elementary school. I loved the banners with perfectly drawn letters above the chalkboard. In fourth grade, and beyond, I did a lot of doodling with letterforms…Of course I was also the go-to person to draw people’s names on their notebooks in graffiti-esque writing.

What other lettering artists inspire you?

Letterers: Marian Bantjes + any letterer who does things by hand (I’m a computery type nerd so handskills impress me to no end), pretty much everyone in the LetterCult LetterMakers list Type Designers: H&FJ, Alejandro Paul, Mark Simonson.

What’s next for you?

I’d like to expand the Daily Drop Cap project into products, so I think that’s what’s next on the horizon. I also started a bit of a sub-company called Unofficial Business Co. through which I’ll be releasing notepads of the Day-Ruining Invoice I created a little bit ago [ed: now available]. Other than that, more book covers, lettering, advertising work, letterpress, etc.

What do you like most about letterpress?

There are a few reasons why I love letterpress. Of course, because it looks great, but mostly because it’s a way for me to feel like I’m making actual artwork and not just something that exists on the computer and is gone in a week. The reason why I got into print design is because I love being able to feel and touch what I make. With most of the work that I do, I never get to see the printed final. The piece only exists for me on my computer. Letterpress is definitely the most tactile of the print mediums and being able to feel the curves of the letterforms I make with my fingertips is really satisfying.

And finally, what are five things people don’t know about you?

These are a bit tough to come up with because I think I’m a completely compulsive internet over-sharer and am definitely an open book to anyone I meet. Here are five things I think most people don’t know about me:

1. My favorite movie of all time is The Secret of NIMH. I used to watch it every time I got sick as a kid and I still do that as an adult.

2. I met my boyfriend on match.com.

3. I can’t handle the teacups ride at amusement parks, but I’ll ride any rollercoaster.

4. I know all of the words to several Tupac songs (left over from the “Zima and Jolly Rancher” years of my early teenagehood).

5. I own so many clothes (because I’ve been basically the same size since age 15) that I only have to do laundry once a month or sometimes not for two months.

UNTIL WE GET OUR COMMENTS WORKING PROPERLY…

give Jessica a shout-out or feedback on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jessicahische

LINKS

Jessica’s website

Daily Drop Cap

Jessica’s old blog

SEE ALSO

Frank Sturges, Jessica’s rep

Louise Fili

MORE

That was the consensus from our panel of type and lettering aficionados, who picked their ten favorite pieces from our Best of 2009.

We used their input to help pick the LetterCult Top 10—after the jump, along with the Top 10s from our contributors. (The Top 10s are not ranked 1-10.)

It was a fun exercise with subjective results. Thanks for taking a look.

Thursday night: an interview with the Custom Letters Person of the Year. Edit: Friday afternoon.

LetterCult’s TOP 10

The Top 10 is below. On the following pages, the Top 10 from Corey Holms, Mark Simonson, Tiffany Wardle de Sousa, Grant Hutchinson, Alex Savakis, Hrant Papazian, Jonathan Selig, Ray Frenden and Beejay

ALISON CARMICHAEL

Addition by subtraction. An unforgettable image that kills every WASH ME ever left on a dirty car.

JON CONTINO

BKLYN in the classic monogram style. The NY seals the deal.

DADO QUEIROZ

Paper. Plaster. Or is it all Pixels? Either way, this one is a beauty.

MARTA CERDA ALIMBAU

Beautiful, precise, daring.

MICHIEL VAN DER BORN

Sketch to vector to steel, carved by high-pressure jets of water. Just nuts.

JESSICA HISCHE

Stunning letters x 26.

THE SHORT

Legos for the win.

JAN BUBLE

Great renderings capture beauty in the tubes.

JORDAN JELEV

Jordan’s gift for his wife. No computer cut and paste.

MICHIEL VAN DER BORN

Tons of lettering styles; several panelists dug this.

Appreciation for the people making Custom Letters. Inspiration for everyone else. A whole lot of great work.

Wednesday, we’ll pick a Top 10.

Thursday, we’ll have a feature/interview with the Person of the Year.

Enjoy! nom nom nom.

MATT LYON / C86

ERIC KU

ALEX TROCHUT

LUCA BARCELONA

MICHIEL VAN DER BORN

GIAMPIERO QUAINI

KENNETH FRASER

ANDY SMITH

MICHAEL CLARK

ALISON CARMICHAEL

DAVE BAILEY

MAXWELL LORD

MICAH LIDBERG

NATE WILLIAMS

PEDRO SCANDIANI

PAUL HOLLINSWORTH

LENNARD SCHUURMANS

RICHARD PEREZ

GEONETIX

SANTAAAH

SEB LESTER

ALEX TROCHUT

LINZIE HUNTER

ISABELL SEIFFERT

SHOE MUELMAN

MICHIEL VAN DER BORN

KEN BARBER / AL MERCER

GEMMA O’BRIEN

SERGEY SHAPIRO

ALBERTO SEVESO

JON CONTINO

ALEX TROCHUT

JON CONTINO

DAVID CROY

PAUL TORRES

ALEX TROCHUT

JON CONTINO

CRYSTAL KLUGE

VICKY NEWMAN

DAVID CROY

CHRISTIAN SAN JOSE

ALEX BELTECHI

CHARLES BORGES de OLIVEIRA

ALEX TROCHUT

SHOE MEULMAN

NANCY HARRIS ROUEMY & PATRICK GRIFFIN

BRANDT BOTES

JAN BUBLE

Now that the year is over, the fun begins as we sort through the best and the brightest in Custom Letters for 2009!

We will release our Best of 2009 on Monday, Feb. 1, and we’ll also have a list of our Top 10 favorites, a Custom Letters Person of the Year, and a few other things.

Here was our Best Of at the halfway point of 2009.

The Custom Letters category includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and original type design. It could also involve making letters with sticks and berries, or carving letters into a tree. It’s an elastic category.

The Custom, in this instance, means built from scratch; we aren’t looking for customization—a type treatment or 3d treatment—of an existing typeface. It can be 3D if it’s built from scratch, and not simply an extrusion of an existing typeface.

A few other things:

• The deadline to submit is Sunday, Jan. 24, midnight Pacific time.

• We’ve set up a dedicated Gmail account for submissions: lettercult [AT] gmail.com. You can submit for yourself or others. Make sure your submission, or the linked image, is at least 800 pixels wide. We’ll confirm receipt of your submissions, but we won’t contact you after that. There is no limit to the number of submissions you can make, but please edit yourself, and pick your best work. Please include a link to your site. And please do not send work completed before 2009.

• Through Jan. 24, you can also add your piece to the Custom Letters Flickr group. If you already have something there, you don’t need to resend.

• If you don’t submit, there’s still a good chance we’ll find your piece if you’ve uploaded it somewhere. However, if it’s on your site, and it’s unclear what year you created it, we won’t include it.

• We are aware of certain styles that get copied. If you’re aping the current Designer of the Moment, we’d ask you to please, find something original to submit.

• Everyone included in our Best of 2009 First Half is now part of the Best of 2009 for the Year. If you’re on that first list, email us and we’ll include a link to your site.

• If you or someone you know are not on our list of LetterMakers, email us.

• Once the list comes out, we cannot add any more pieces, so please, pass this on and send us links so we don’t miss anything.

Thanks!

Jordan Jelev opens the box, unwraps the wine, and studies the label.

The wine label is his canvas, a place where he transforms his design and lettering into hand-crafted works of art.

Jelev, a designer from Bulgaria, has earned a reputation for his excellent wine labels—his nickname is The Labelmaker—but his work goes beyond labels. Lately, he has been experimenting with different approaches, different tools, and different styles. Making letters has become his work, his play, his obsession, his passion.

The free bottles of wine aren’t bad, either.

“Yes, I am a dedicated wine drinker, though I consider myself a total amateur in this field,” Jelev says in an email, adding his usual at the end.

The fact that Jordan Jelev is making letters at all is something of an upset.

He graduated with an Economics degree and was preparing for a career as an accountant or bookkeeper. He probably wouldn’t have discovered lettering had his father and wife not given him a set of automatic pens and some pen nibs as a surprise gift.

“I do not know how it happened—seriously. It just happened,” Jelev says. “I think I will have to kill myself if I had to work according to my education…a bookkeeper, for example. Funny—could not stand it.”

We communicated via e-mail over the past few months for this Q & A.

How would you describe your fascination with letterform?

For me, letters are maybe one of the most interesting things and phenomenons in the world. I mean it because I see it everyday in my work and in my life. It’s a real miracle to express yourself with writing…to make a long, long swash when you are happy and a short, sharp stroke if you are angry. Calligraphy gives you a true chance to be what you want to be, to be yourself, to free your emotions, and your senses. And if it is really good, people can read it.

You’ve received a lot of attention for your work on wine bottles. How’d you get involved and what do you like about that medium?

It all began some 13 years ago. I started working for www.factor-r.net and the studio already had some wine clients I started with. Then, I made my own style of how to make labels and packages and the number of clients grew bigger and bigger. Of course, there is no need to say that a large part of my wine labels is based on calligraphy, or sometimes my whole label is totally hand-crafted.

The calligraphy itself makes my labels more distinguished, more recognizable. It is really hard to find one that uses custom lettering in the 21st Century—instead of a large amount of digital fonts. Anyway, I am addicted to calligraphy. It gives life, color and emotion to my work. It all looks different, and here, in my country, almost everyone knows it is done by me.

How did you make the switch from Economics to design and lettering?

Well this happens here really often—you can see a doctor driving a cab, or an engineer selling tomatoes. My case is not exactly like those I mention above…Here is the situation: After finishing my service at the Navy in March of 1996, I had three things of importance:

1. I got my discipline in the Army.

2. I wanted to get a good education.

3. I already had the experience of graphic design and pre-press while doing everything around the Navy newspaper Morski Dnevnik

So having 1,2,3 on my mind, I decided that an Economics degree will be good for me in the future, and on the other hand, I was totally convinced I would have to both study and work.

I started working at Zograph Studio from 1996 to 1998—there I had my experience with pre-press, graphic design, typography, some different machines like several imagesetters, etc. And while being a student in Economics, I began to realize I had some extra powers as a graphic designer and even pre-presser. In fact, the truth is that I am popular as a graphic designer, but I have remarkable experience in the pre-press field and in offset- and flexo-printing that I keep a secret, though some of my colleagues know it.

Your secret is out.

Yes. They use me as an adviser on some difficult projects. So I saw that my skills are in graphic design and I started developing them. Now, I do not even know where my diploma is. I think it is somewhere in a drawer at my office, but I do not think I would try to find it.

Was your family disappointed you didn’t stick with Economics?

Nobody was disappointed, because it was quite obvious I had a lot to show in the field of design and less as an accountant. So nobody got disappointed and nobody ever thought to give me directions in my life—I have made a choice and I followed it on my own.

So as a designer, you are self-taught?

Yes, completely self-taught.

What is Bulgaria like for design?

That is a long conversation. We should make a separate one for this question exclusively. I wish there was a better design climate here and because of some regional exceptions here, I do believe the situation will change in the near future.

Where did you look for design inspiration?

Well, I started to look at what others do. In 2000, there was almost nothing to inspire me, except my friend Dimitar Traychev. In fact he is an inspiration for a whole generation in Bulgaria, I think…but that’s a long story too. He is a very interesting person!

You are also following in the footsteps of Luca Pacioli, right?

Luca Pacioli was the father of double-entry accounting, but in fact, he was an artist. He even designed his own typeface. So I am not an exception—seems there is some strange liaison between Economics, calligraphy and design.

You’re learning more new techniques and styles and pushing yourself in different mediums. Why is that important to you?

I think I would never stop learning more and more. For me, that is the only way to find myself, my mood, my emotions—it is something like fitness, but not for your muscles, but for your soul.

I’ve always had some crazy ideas, some of them already seen, but I think I have far more to learn from now on.

Your work has been evolving, from Blackletter to Islamic calligraphy. Can you explain the connection?

Yes, I mix them…there is a close relationship between those two writing styles. I think the origins of Blackletter are in the Islamic culture. I do believe this is true. I am a Blackletter addict. This inspires me really a lot—every letter is a unique logo. I can write Blackletter every day. This love of mine led me to follow Islamic calligraphy, Persian especially…and I found for myself the relationships between gothics, Islamic writing, and those artistic strokes we can find in graffiti…it is all same thing, same culture, same vision, spread over several centuries of history.

Who are some of the calligraphers who have inspired you?

There are two great guys that give me a lot of inspiration every time I look at their works—Hassan Massoudy and Julien Breton. I love their work and I am learning from them—it’s like trying to play something from Mozart, Beethoven, etc., but in calligraphy. I am trying to get to their level and style and from this state, to generate my own calligraphy.

You’ve been experimenting a lot with rice paper. What attracted you to this texture, and how has that been working out?

Well here, the most interesting things are:

1. The ink stays really wet on the paper, and makes small ink spots on it, which basically forms the texture inside the letters.

2. You can use a backlight to make your calligraphy glow, which I found is really interesting and really simple to do. Just put a lamp behind it and everything changes.

Can you explain Asemic calligraphy for those who might not know what that is?

Asemic calligraphy is a group in Flickr I came upon a few months ago and I loved this name. Asemic stands for means nothing—strokes, letters, swashes, moods, gestures—it is just calligraphy that means nothing and could mean anything.

What different tools and ink that you use for your different types of calligraphy?

I do not use so many tools as it possibly looks. I use a thick paper nib, or a wood nib for the wide strokes. I often use bayonette nibs, copperplate nibs, oblique pen holder….what else, automatic pens, coit pens…and a pilot parallel pen thanks to my friend Maxim Ivanov. And I sometimes use some strange tools like pipette, chopsticks, and many others. I have recently started working with acrylic ink for airbrush of Pebeo—Julien Breton advised me so. But I mostly use Windsor and Newtone inks and Talens Ecoline.

Recently, you collaborated on a typeface with FontFabric.

Yes. It is a strange Blackletter type called Grant. But this is only the beginning. We want to start two more projects—the Kaloyan Typeset and another Blackletter type that is still unnamed.

You got a Wacom tablet in late 2008. What can you tell us about the results digitally vs. the results with ink on paper?

I think both cannot be compared. They both do calligraphy, but the result, the feeling, the style—everything is totally different. In digital, you have software, wires, some strange tools, plastic surface, digital simulation pressure levels etc…and a digital print finally.

What are some of your goals for the near future?

Well, there many goals, in fact a lifetime would not be enough for me to make everything, so I stay with only 3-4 of them.

1. Maybe I will concentrate some efforts in type design.

2. Maybe I will try to approach some wineries in USA and Australia.

3. Maybe I will continue mixing my style in calligraphy between digital and traditional.

4. And of course I will look after my kids (two daughters) and wife.

What are 5 things people don’t know about you?

1. I read a Latin dictionary in my bathroom.

2. I read a wine encyclopedia in my second-floor bathroom.

3. I am afraid of heights.

4. I love to use my 4-stroke engine Honda lawnmower.

5. I hate to walk barefoot.

LINKS

Jordan’s website

Jordan’s Behance Profile

Cargo Collective site

SEE ALSO

Jordan on Facebook

Asemic calligraphy group on Flickr

FontFabric

Dimitar Traychev

Maxim Ivanov

Morski Dnevnik newspaper

Julien Breton

Hassan Massoudy

Luca Pacioli Wiki

MORE

THE COMIC BOOK VENDOR with the moustache sneered at me.

I’d asked him a simple question. Now, he seemed offended.

“You wanna take a picture of what?” he asked.

“The letters.”

“The letters?”

“Yes. Some of the lettering.”

“And why is that?”

“Because…I like letters.”

He went silent. He was studying me.

“Okay, fine, you can take some pictures,” he said, finally.

He watched me carefully, and at one point, he showed an interest in a few of the lettering examples I’d chosen to photograph.

“You know, I’ve never noticed some of this stuff,” he said. “Interesting.”

He managed a thin smile, and I smiled, too.

And so went another awesome Comic-Con, which ended Sunday in San Diego.

The San Diego Comic-Con is an annual celebration of fandom, a pop-culture explosion of freaks and geeks, nerds and noobs, Twilight addicts, and grown men in spandex Tron suits.

It’s also a chance for the world to get a sneak peek at what’s in the pipeline—film, TV, comic books, toys, and video games, among other things.

On Sunday, amid the chaos of more than 30,000 people roaming the hallways of the Convention Center, a few of us checked out the custom lettering, which was drowned out by the heavy presence of Comic Sans.

Stuart Sandler (Font Diner), Rian Hughes (Device Fonts) and Nate Piekos (Blambot) were among those spotted over the course of four days.

And for a few hours on Sunday, I tried to capture some of the Custom Letters at Comic-Con. Not the greatest photos ever, but with Chewbacca and Pikachu hovering about, it was easy to get distracted.

As we approach the halfway point of 2009, we’ve begun seeking out the best and brightest in the ol’ Custom Letters Dept. And we are asking for submissions—if you see something we’ve missed, please send us a link.

Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design (we’d prefer to feature new/original type over, say, revivals).

Custom, in this instance, means built from scratch; we aren’t looking for customization—a type treatment or 3d treatment—of an existing typeface.

We’ll be adding more pieces as the year progresses, culminating with a Best of 2009 at the end of the year.

Now to the good, the great, and the notable stuff we’ve seen so far in 2009.

ARON JANCSO

LUCA IONESCU

ENKELING

NANCY HARRIS ROUEMY & PATRICK GRIFFIN

TRAVIS PITTS

RANDY JONES

CHARLES BORGES de OLIVEIRA

MICHELE ANGELO

MICHAEL TYZNIK

ADAM GARCIA

LUCA IONESCU

NATE WILLIAMS

ANDY SMITH / WILL BRYANT

ADAM GARCIA

GIAMPIERO QUAINI

RAY FRENDEN

BEEJAY

KENNETH FRASER

ANDY SMITH

JESSICA HISCHE

ALEJANDRO INLER

ANDY SMITH

JORDAN JELEV

GIULIA SANTOPADRE

B.T. LIVERMORE

JOEL BIRCH

JESSICA HISCHE

DAVID CROY

ESTHER AARTS

JOEL BIRCH

MIKE GIANT

JEDREK KOSTECKI

GREG JAMES

JESSICA HISCHE

SARAH KING

MAXWELL LORD

NATE WILLIAMS

PEDRO SCANDIANI

PAUL HOLLINSWORTH

LENNARD SCHUURMANS

RICHARD PEREZ

GEONETIX

SANTAAAH

SEB LESTER

ALEX TROCHUT

LINZIE HUNTER

ISABELL SEIFFERT

SHOE MUELMAN

JESSICA HISCHE

ALEX TROCHUT

PARRA

HANDMADE FONT

STEVEN BONNER

GEONETIX

HANDMADE FONT

OSCAR MARCHAL

GEMMA O’BRIEN

ERIC WAETZIG

JON CONTINO

BU DESIGN

GEMMA O’BRIEN

SERGEY SHAPIRO

ALBERTO SEVESO

JON CONTINO

ALEX TROCHUT

DAVID CROY

PAUL TORRES

ALEX TROCHUT

JON CONTINO

CRYSTAL KLUGE

VON GLITSCHKA

VICKY NEWMAN

DAVID CROY

CHRISTIAN SAN JOSE

ALEX BELTECHI

CHARLES BORGES de OLIVEIRA

ALEX TROCHUT

JOHN LANGDON

LUCA BARCELLONA

BEEJAY

BRADLEY FASTCODE

JOSHUA TETREAULT

ADAM DEDMAN

FIODOR SUMKIN

ANGELA DUNCAN

CHRIS PIASCIK

SIMON PAGE

WOJTEK POLAK

UPDATE: MORE WORK HERE

please send your links to: brianjar (at) earthlink.net … or UPLOAD to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/customletters/ … thanks!

If you were an independent type designer, circa 1977, these are the tools you might use to create a typeface.

These were the tools that Mark Simonson used to create Kandal, a wedge serif typeface with an intriguing backstory.

The Making of Kandal spanned three decades, four Presidents, and a move from ink to digital.

Simonson began the typeface in the 70s, and called it Excalibur; it was tweaked in the 80s; and it was finally released in the 90s as Kandal.

Simonson, whom we interviewed last fall, agreed to an in-depth discussion of the typeface.

In an age of digital creation and instant gratification, it’s instructive to look at how things used to be done, sans computer. And Kandal is also a story of persistence in pursuit of a dream.

We go back to 1977.

Simonson was in college, studying graphic design, when he really started to pay attention to type. For example, he was intrigued by the differences between Univers and Helvetica.

He didn’t think about making type. Until…

One day at school, he noticed an oversized publication scattered about. He reassembled the pages, and that’s when he discovered U&lc, the magazine.

“It was like a bolt of lightning to my interest in type at the time. And was a major factor leading to my interest in designing typefaces,” Simonson says.

His immersion into typography sparked a desire to publish a typeface. The best place to do that was International Typeface Corporation (ITC).

“Their faces were very popular, they were not tied to any particular typesetting company or typesetting method, and the offer of an up-front payment ($1,500 for each weight/style) plus royalties (10 percent) seemed very good at the time,” Simonson recalls. “Letraset or (VGC) might have been good alternatives, but their fonts were tied to a specific manufacturer, for example. There was practically no place else like ITC.”

Now, if you look carefully at the jpg at the very top of the page, in the lower right corner, you’ll see a note, partially obscured.

Please write and tell me what you think of my design and how I can make my dream come true. Typographically yours, Mark L. Simonson

The dream was real, and Simonson was living it, doing everything he could to make it happen.

“I was composing the letter I wanted to send to ITC,” Simonson says of the note. “I was naive and full of myself, and getting all worked up about it…It’s sort of embarrassing, like those notebooks from high school with the name of a girl you had a crush on, all over them.”

Simonson, in his own words, describes how he created Excalibur, which was influenced by the Jenson-esque type that Jim Parkinson was creating for Rolling Stone.

Simonson: The preliminary sketches were not unlike what I do nowadays. The finished sketches—which I intended to be the basis of the final art—were in pencil on tracing paper, about 4 inches on the cap height. I traced these using markers onto tracing paper in order to ‘preview’ how the final letters would look.

I did the uppercase, lowercase, numbers and some punctuation for the ‘regular’ weight. I also did a few letters for each of the other three weights and italics I had planned, enough to spell out the names of the weights (Light, Book, Black, etc.). I also did sample finished art for the regular weight ampersand. This was drawn on illustration board with a Rapidograph technical pen, and filled in with a brush. Corrections were made by scraping ink from the board with an X-ACTO knife.

I used ellipse and circle templates, French curves, and straight-edges as aids in drawing the curves, following my freehand lines. Most of the measurements were done with improvised rulers (marks on the edges of paper scraps) and marked with notes about what they were for.

Interpolation was done similar to Frutiger’s method.

I made scaled-down photostats of the ‘preview’ letter drawings (about 48 point) and pasted them up and made a film negative, which was then used to make dry-transfer sheets using a system that 3M had at the time. Basically, I wrote a cover letter I intended to send to ITC and counted out how many of each letter I would need and used that as a guide when I made the transfer sheets. I then ‘set’ the letter in my typeface using the homemade transfer sheets. This was reduced further to make the final letter as a photostat with type about 14 points.

HE SPENT MOST OF HIS FREE TIME ON EXCALIBUR, MONTH AFTER MONTH, FOR nearly a year. In September 1978, he was ready to submit to ITC. He put together a package of stuff. A year’s worth of work, ready to be judged.

“There was a hand-written cover letter (two pages), a sample of the a ‘final’ drawing, using ink on illustration board…and a second cover letter, the one I made with the homemade transfer type, which served as a sample setting of the typeface,” Simonson says.

“I was really glad to finally be done with it. It took much longer than I expected it would and was agonizingly tedious at some points. I really questioned at the time whether this was something I wanted to do again.”

Then he waited.

He waited some more.

Finally, in January 1979, the mailman dropped off a return package from ITC.

Rejection.

“It was a big letdown because I felt like I had spent so much time and effort on it,” Simonson recalls. “I thought it was really good, but I had no perspective or experience. I had an inkling that it might not be as good as I thought when I started trying to set the cover letter and when I saw it reduced to text size. I realized I had created some serious spacing problems with the way I designed the serifs—they were way too big. I sent it anyway, figuring that, if it was accepted, these problems would be addressed. In the end, the flaws probably didn’t help its chances.”

He got sick of working on Excalibur; he had some better ideas, anyhow.

But Excalibur would remain in the back of his mind, and he still hoped to improve it.

One day in 1981, while browsing in a used book store, he found a book written by Adrian Frutiger. He was told that the book had been specially ordered from Europe, by another customer, who failed to pick it up.

Despite the $67.50 price tag, Simonson bought it. And when the other customer tracked him down and wanted the book back, that’s when Simonson realized he truly had something special.

Frutiger’s book, Type Sign Symbol, revealed many of the tricks of type design, and gave him some new ideas to improve Excalibur.

Then, in the mid-80s, when the Desktop Publishing revolution was taking shape, Simonson discovered Fontographer and he jumped back into type design mode.

Maybe he could revisit Excalibur?

“Working on it in Fontographer caused me to reconsider its potential as a viable typeface,” Simonson says. “In fact, working in Fontographer taught me how much I didn’t know about designing typefaces. It’s one thing to imagine the design and draw some letters, which is what I had been doing for years before using Fontographer, but it’s quite another thing when you start setting those letters into words and paragraphs. I found out that I didn’t know anywhere near what I thought I did.”

Simonson worked on several other faces, including Proxima Sans, and by 1992, he was ready to make a pitch to Mark Solsburg at FontHaus. (Excalibur’s name was changed because an existing typeface had the same name.)

“In July 1992, I faxed FontHaus a list of one-line HAMBURGERFONTS samples of fonts I was working on, about 1-inch tall on the cap height,” he says. “They picked Felt Tip Roman, Kandal (8 fonts), and Proxima Sans (6 fonts) and I signed an exclusive distribution agreement with them in August.”

Excalibur/Kandal finally had a home, 15 years later.

“I was excited,” Simonson says. “But it also meant I had a lot of work to do…I didn’t really think of it as the same face I submitted to ITC, which I regarded as a half-baked failure.”

At the time, Simonson was drawing his letters in Illustrator, and the ‘fonts’ he’d shown FontHaus were really just glyphs on a digital artboard.

“One thing that surprised me was that I was expected to create the finished shipping fonts,” Simonson says. “With ITC, it was taken for granted that experts would turn the designer’s artwork into an actual font, and that the design would most likely be adjusted and optimized by people with years of experience producing fonts for typesetting. The fact that FontHaus offered very little technical or production help kind of freaked me out.”

Kandal was finally released in 1994.

Now, Simonson works entirely digital, primarily in FontLab.

“I would never go back,” Simonson says. “You do get a certain sense of accomplishment mastering things like French curves and technical pens, but the process is just so unforgiving and inflexible and slow. Unless you are trying to give a typeface a handmade look, it’s just not worth it. Plus, with the efficiency of working digitally, you can do so much more than just draw the letters. You can work out the spacing at the same time, play ‘what if’ scenarios with different design ideas, see how a partially designed font looks set in a paragraph, things that would be impractical or impossible working with traditional tools.”

And finally, Simonson adds a postscript…pun intended?

Kandal is not done.

“Fifteen years later, there are a lot of things about the 1994 release I would change,” he says. “I’ve already revisited Proxima Sans and it’s likely I’ll do something similar with Kandal at some point. So, I don’t think it’s the last version yet.”

LINKS

MS-Studio
Mark Simonson dot com
Mark’s Pangram Helper
Mark’s National Lampoon Site

SEE ALSO

Kandal page
FontHaus
Frutiger’s Type Sign Symbol @ Bookfinder.com
Jim Parkinson

MORE PICTURES

next up: interview with Jordan Jelev, June 15