The Art of Lettering: Perfectly Imperfect Hand-Crafted Type Design

Description

Hand lettering is making a massive comeback, bursting out of its graphic-design bubble and finding a mainstream via collecting social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest. The avid resurrected interest in hand lettering seemingly goes hand in hand with the weariness audiences feel with constant slick digital presentation of the information they consume. Hand lettering has a compelling appeal, and is a kind of pushback against the impersonal machine-made digital environment. Goodtype's The Art of Lettering collects myriad new and established graphic designers for whom hand lettering is a time-honoured art that has modern applications. Showcasing several artists from all over the world, the book displays their typographical takes and illustrates their perfectly imperfect hand-crafted art, from beautiful photographs of concept sketches to end result. Sometimes straying away from traditional pen-calligraphy, artists today employ new and creative approaches, including building type with coffee grounds, watercolours; and combinations of different hand tools, resulting in a dynamically fresh approach to creating type. Equal parts inspiring and innovative, Goodtype's The Art of Lettering appeals to graphic designers, artists, and type enthusiasts alike.

Brooke Robinson is a Austin, Texas-based graphic designer and also director of Marketing and Graphics at Tyler's, a retailer in Austin, Texas. She is responsible for leading all graphic design and marketing initiatives, including radio, print, television, internet/social, public, sales, and special events at all six Tyler's locations in Texas. Robinson has had the pleasure of designing limited edition TOMS shoes for the Tyler's x TOMS collaboration three years in a row. Joseph Alessio is a lettering artist and designer from the Detroit, MI, area. Cariatipos is an art and design collective from Brazil. David Salinas is a designer and letterer from Austin, TX. Roxy Prima is a graphic designer based in San Diego, CA.

"Goodtype: The Art of Lettering is noisy, eclectic and glorious. It's more than 280 pages of lettering samples, with a foreword by Ken Barber and brief interviews with Jessica Hische, Lauren Hom and Gemma O'Brien. The foreword is insightful. The interviews are fresh, lively and provide a peek at what drives these three remarkable women. But it's the examples of lettering that make this book grand. The motivation behind Goodtype is Brooke Robinson's insatiable love of lettering. She collected examples by the bushel-and stored them all on her phone. When she got to the point where she would have to delete samples to gather more, it hit her: she could upload all of the images to an Instagram account dedicated to her lettering and type finds. This was in 2013, and Robinson never looked back. But there's more to Goodtype than its collection of drop-to-your-knees lettering. In a world of bits and bytes, we seldom see design projects in their evolutionary stages. Goodtype, however, gives us a look over the designer's shoulder as the lettering evolves. We're treated to the rough pencil sketches (complete with editing notes) and predigital renderings that lead to the final art. Buy Goodtype. Keep it close to where you work. If your typographic mojo falls flat, pick up the book. If you're not sure how to handle a bit of display typography, pick up the book. If you're looking for a young and talented lettering artist, pick up the book." -Communication Arts