Alphabet Roadtrip

Words & Pictures: Process for a Calligram Logo

Successfully melding words and images is a tricky design challenge, particularly when it involves a brassiere. Exactly how do you fit two unequally long words into two equal shapes? And how do you make it readable? And what style of bra? and are there ribbons???

This project for Woman Within was a lot of fun. The process started with pencils to solve basic pose and letterform style questions. Then I moved to tighter brush sketches and started mixing and matching elements to get to something that would read immediately as words, with just enough suggestion of "woman" to tell you what it was about.

Above, the final logo, before being vectorized.

Lettering Design for Book Covers: Contemporary Fiction

Here are samples of different ways contemporary script calligraphy can be integrated into book cover design. Most of these books are ongoing series, in which the hand lettered book title becomes part of the brand.

                                 

Casual, fun brush lettering integrated into the illustration

Monoline pen handwriting for Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic" series

 

Brush calligraphy that flows with the curves of the illustration          

                                    

Script as illustration, a visual pun

 

Contemporary brush script designed to play off of a font

                       

A long title treated as a text shape for Laurel House

Elegant contemporary pen calligraphy in two different styles

 

 

The Seattle Times Logo, Well Weathered Gothic

"Signs I Like" has been on a long vacation. But today I saw something I could not resist outside the Lighthouse coffee shop. I did the lettering for the Seattle Times masthead about twelve years ago, in association with Landor Seattle. Coincidentally the logo was featured in Logo Reviews a few days ago. The true test of a logo is how well does it stand the test of time? Here it is on a newspaper kiosk, rotated so you can compare it with the way it is used in the paper. I had nothing against that eagle, but I do like how abstract (and even more Gothic) this becomes without it. Perhaps someone liked it so much they tore it out to sew on their jeans:

My task was to look at every other Gothic newspaper masthead in America and come up with a subtle, very legible, fresh variation. Here is the before and after:

(I do not know who did the eagle, so unfortunately I can't credit them here.)

Masthead typography is uniquely challenging. Gothic is by its nature very difficult to read. It may look traditional and authoritative, but it is based on a completely zen principle: the space between letters and that magical yin/yang balance of darkness and light. This was a dream project. My father was publisher for eight years of the paper he started, The Auburn Citizen, which also had a Gothic masthead. This assignment connected me back through time to the long tradition of the small- town newspaper and work in the original public sphere. Websites, as convenient and up-to-the-minute as they are, do not age well; we will never admire their distressed and curling edges or how the wind transformed their serifs.

 See more typographic logotypes at Iskra Design.

Lettering Design For Book Covers: Fantasy Genre

 

Title design by Iskra, a mix of Gothic and Uncial pen calligraphy

                    

Drawn typographic lettering design by Iskra

Title and Author lettering design by Iskra

The Imajica letterforms were designed by me as a proprietary style to be used in Clive Barker's books over a period of time. They were then lifted and turned into a font for general use by another designer without my knowledge or permission, a perplexing and less than gallant appropriation of one artist's works by another.

See more book cover title lettering at Iskra Design.

Classic Calligraphic Lettering Styes for Romance Book Jackets

I do title and author design for many books by romance authors. These recent covers for Karen Robards and Danielle Steele are a good match of lettering style with other visual elements.

Title and author calligraphy by Iskra, Art Director Lisa Litwack

Title calligraphy and lettering design by Iskra, Art Director Lynn Andreozzi

Like, Like...... Love: The New UnFacebook "Like" Stickers from Iskra Design

 
© Iskra Design

To download the UnFacebook personalized "Like" stickers go to the pdf portfolio section at Iskra Design.

Lettering Design for Book Covers: Samples of Historically-based Calligraphy and Hand Lettering for Titles

What I like about book title design is the variety of skills I get to use. It's not just about pens and brushes and lettering techniques.  Each genre of book requires a different expression of historical era and a feel for the part of popular (or elite) culture the book lives in. These examples of book title and author typography are all based on traditional historical letterforms.

"Juliet" is Humanist, with a flourish. Alexandra Ripley's "Love Divine" is a very condensed and stylized version of Uncial. "The Lost Recipe for Happiness" is a nostalgic mix of small caps with ornamental italic accents. "Nelson's Trafalgar" incorporates a hand-drawn cartouche with a script that is more font than calligraphy, although it is completely hand-lettered.

 

The childrens' and fantasy genre books below draw from historical sources also, but with subtle differences. Each cover treatment should look unique to the author, and the typography and hand-lettering become important parts of the author and series brand. "Babe" is done with a calligraphy pen on rough paper, which gives it a soft look that goes with the sweetness of the cover colors and the rounded animal shapes. "The Knight" started as calligraphic Roman Caps but was then inked and given a more retro-typographic feeling, enhanced by the outline. The bolder serifs give it a masculine and heroic feeling echoed in the illustration.

 

 

Additional samples of the Uncial style showing how differently it can be expressed. For Brian Jaques (yes, you can fall in love with a mouse!) the ornamental serifs and quirky curves go with Martin the Warrior's character and mimic the ornamental border. "Son of the Sword" is closest to a purely historical Uncial of any of these titles, done with an edged pen on rough paper. The Uncial d is one of my favorite letters of all time.

 

Hand lettering and hand lettered typography © Iskra Johnson

See my book jacket portfolio at www.iskradesign.com

Handwriting in Lettering Design: Examples of Unique Handwriting Used Instead of Fonts

I've been working on a wonderful handwriting project this month, which I'll be able to post part of in a few weeks when it has gone to print. In the meantime, because I get so many requests for handwriting I am posting part of my portfolio today as an easy online reference.

All of these projects were for clients who wanted a look and voice that they could not find in existing fonts. Handwriting is a particular part of lettering design that has unique challenges. Fonts always look like fonts, no matter how many alternate letters are added. And they have to go through the sifting machine of endless compromise: each letter has to play well with every other letter no matter the circumstance. This takes away a lot of their spirit. I have designed proprietary handwriting fonts for several clients including Betty Crocker and PBS. The fonts turned out well, but I always felt the pain of sacrificing my children: those wonderful leaping upstrokes and sweeping descenders and playful flirty serifs all had to be called in from recess and made to sit still in class. In this portfolio page of handwriting the letters get to express their personality.

You can see my complete handwriting portfolio at www.iskradesign.com

How Do You Say Coffee? Expressive Mixed Media Calligraphy

When I do expressive calligraphy, expression wins out over technique and traditionally beautiful lettering design. What matters most is the personality of the words, and in this case, the personality of the coffee customer.

I live in Coffee Town USA, yes, that would be Seattle, and I am a confirmed devotee. I do love to watch how people order their favorite drinks. Particularly those people who request the "no-foam-no-caf-non-fat---latte?" I mean, what is this? This is not a latte. It's simply a state of denial. But then I'm in the camp of coffee-is-a-vehicle-for-cream, or why bother.

This piece is done in watercolor, guache, felt pen, pointed pen, brush and a variety of brushes. It was created as part of my ongoing fascination with letterforms as an expression of voice. I see my job as a contemporary lettering artist as being a channel for character. I'm not a stylist with a "hand" but a character actress, making visible the intangibles of tone of voice, personality and unique DNA.

See more expressive calligraphy and calligraphic illustration at www.iskradesign.com.

Zen Brushwork in Lettering Design: Tools of the Trade

When the art director at Penguin USA called to ask me to write the word "Zen" for a book called Zen and the Art of Making a Living it couldn't have come at a better time. I was at that very moment sitting on my meditation cushion in a corner of my office contemplating The Emptiness after finishing several advertising campaigns, and I had nothing on my calendar. Although I felt cold terror at the prospect of this little three letter word, a word that conjured centuries of calligraphy masters in their robes and sandals not to mention the three sensei I had studied with, I said "Sure." And then I said to myself, as I gathered up a dozen brushes and pens and stacks of paper, "It can't be any harder than that other three-letter word, "new."

Stones and metal weight used to keep fragile rice paper from lifting

At that time I was still grinding my own ink, using a traditional inkstone. Now for most brushwork I use Moon Palace Ink which I get from John Neal Books, although I sometimes grind ink from a stick and mix it with liquid ink for certain very absorbent papers.

  

Inkstone and traditional sumi ink.

The ink must be tested out many times to see how black it is, blotted and tried on different papers, with different brushes, as each one gives a different effect. I also use pens, which give a different character entirely.

Automatic pen, oldstyle ruling pen, edged pen, new ruling pen, steel brush

As I work I am designing in the moment with the gesture of the brush. I try to remain intuitive and kinesthetic, feeling the drag of the ink and the paper and experimenting with the invisible element of calligraphy: time. How fast or slow you move the brush completely transforms the stroke. Design, however, includes inconvenient facts like the resemblance of a "Z" to a "2" and psychological factors: should the word feel elegant and disciplined? artful? playful? ordinary? I keep all this into account as well as the history of western calligraphic forms and the basic styles of shodo. The final style that was chosen for the title is based on a hybrid of "bone" and "clerical" styles of Chinese calligraphy. The book is now in its fifth printing, but has kept the same title throughout.

                             
Photographs and calligraphy © 2011 Iskra Johnson