Hum a Hymn

Yesterday, I was looking through my sketchbook for some words I wrote down last week, and instead of what I was actually looking for, I found these words:

“Hum a Hymn,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, available in my shop

I do love stumbling upon some old idea I had forgotten about, and then looking at it with a fresh perspective. This was a fun little drawing to do—I seem to be in love with the 5 x 5 inch size these days, and this “ribbon type” as I’m calling it is really forgiving and fun to draw.

Happy weekend to you!

Experiments in Type

Yes, it is Thursday, which means I get to stay home from work work and do the work I love: art. I do love the holidays, but they definitely throw my art-making schedules off, so it is with great relief and joy that I find myself inside a whole glorious day dedicated to art-making.

Last night, and this morning, I have been playing around with different handmade typefaces, inspired by hand typography in two books: Kate Bingaman-Burt’s typography in the Handmade Nation book by Faythe Levine and Cortney Heimerl, and the foreword typography by Michael Mabry in the book Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-made Elements in Graphic Design.

I will leave you to go out and look at these books yourself for typographic and creative inspiration (I found both at my public library), but here are some of my experiments at trying to make different typefaces that convey moods:

The “Happy Thursday” type at the top of this post is a personal interpretation of one of Bingaman-Burt’s type faces, and the rest are just me messing around. This exercise was highly fun, so I recommend it to all of you creative types. There is always more room to explore!

I think I will be using the “Happy Thursday” typeface for my wedding invitations (for those of you who didn’t know, I’m engaged and getting married next Fall!). I’m very excited to design various paper items for the wedding. I’m starting in on the brainstorming phase right now—more to come on that in the next several months.

Doing the job, by hand

So I considered titling this post the same as the title of the book I’m about to mention, Hand Job, but I decided to veer away from the shock value. Michael Perry, the writer/editor/compiler of this book about hand typography must have kept himself giggling for several days after he came up with the title. I think it fits for the crowd interested in this book. Hand typography, as opposed to computer-based typography, feels like somewhat of an off-beat, artsy subculture.

Left: “Slap Your Friends,” t-shirt design by Adrian Johnson
Right: “Olaf,” Poster by Adrian Johnson, one in a series titled, “The Pillage People”

I didn’t really even know there was a subculture, until I started doing it. Really, I think everyone who does typography by hand has two things in common: they love letters/words and they love to draw. As Perry says in his introduction, since computers took over the typography business, hand typographers tend to be people looking for quirks and imperfections to give their work warmth and character. I don’t think I really came looking for anything specific, I just wanted to incorporate words into my art, and it just sounded more fun to draw them myself.

Miscellaneous type by Andy Beach

So, I heard about this book through the blog-vine, and I really wanted to get it because it sounded interesting and fun to look at. I don’t have a whole lot of cash these days though, so I wanted to see the book before I actually bought it, just to make sure it was worth it. I searched the local libraries and bookstores, and even asked Borders to order it for me so I could look at it before buying, but they couldn’t even get it.

I had reconciled myself to the fact that I would either have to buy it online, or not see it at all. But alas, browsing the new books section of the public library, on a totally unrelated errand, I looked down, and there it was. I grabbed it off the shelf and laughed, and then looked around wondering if anyone thought I might be a little nuts. It seems I was meant to see this book!

“All Kinds of People,” by Andy Beach

All of the pictures above are some of my favorite pages from this book. Perry has used this book as a way of cataloging a variety of work by a bunch of different hand typographers. If you’re interested in tons of visual inspiration, this is a great book. It is light on copy/prose/written narrative and heavy on imagery. I could stare at the miscellaneous type page above for hours.

Here is a little alphabet sketch I made, while procrastinating about doing other work.