Art Of Lettering: Good Type Hardcover

B. Robinson

Hand lettering is making a comeback, bursting out of its graphic-design bubble and finding a mainstream via collecting social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest. The avid interest in hand lettering seemingly goes hand in hand with the weariness audiences feel with constant slick digital presentation of the information they consume. The Art of Lettering collects myriad new and established graphic designers for whom hand lettering is a time-honored art that has modern applications. Showcasing more than 100 artists from all over the world, the book displays their typographic takes and illustrates their perfectly imperfect handcrafted art, from beautiful photographs of concept sketches to the end result. 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.

9780847862320

English

Rizzoli International Publications

10/Jul/18

288

Brooke Robinson is a graphic designer and the creator of Goodtype. Ken Barber is a designer with renowned graphic design and type foundry collective House Industries. Aaron Draplin is a graphic and brand designer renowned for designing the iconic Field Notes series and creating several logos for Obama-era government projects. Jessica Hische is a graphic and type designer and letterer renowned for creating an eye-catching Love stamp for the U.S. Postal Service, which ended up selling more 250 million stamps. Gemma O Brien is a typographer and letter designer recently selected for PRINT magazine s annual list of the best creatives under thirty years old working today.

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