Hand Lettering Interview by Victoria Whincup
What makes you choose to draw your type by hand?
Reason 1 - Hand rendering gives a word a tone ..it tells the viewer how to interpret it on a subliminal level. Like a horror movie with music.. if you didn’t have the creepy music when someone walked into the basement … it wouldn’t be scary
Reason 2 - When I was a child I had a learning disability.. When I would try to read a book, my eyes would jump all over the page .. This forced me to see letters as forms/objects rather than the words they represented
When you are hand drawing type, do you think about drawing the word itself, or do you articulate individual letters?
I would say word .. most of my hand lettering is part of a bigger family .. I think if I focused on making each letter very unique .. it would be almost too stylized and distracting .. but there are always exceptions
When drawing a word, is the meaning and context always important, or just how it looks?
both .. sometimes the word can look conceptually like something the word is about .. and other times it just sets a mood .. how to interpret the word, happy, sad, energetic, etc
How important to you is the interplay of text and image?
very important .. I like mixing lettering with imagery.. I think they balance each other out .. imagery is very organic and letter forms are very mechanical .. each can provide information the other cannot.
Do you think fonts are improved if they are hand drawn?
It all depends what your objectives are .. there isn’t one solution for everything.
Why is there more hand lettering in design today?
Probably because it’s a response to the high-tech boom in the 90’s where everything was slick and highly polished. Now the pendulum has swung the other way .. Eventually it will return to the middle and both the ”high-tech” look and “hand drawn” look will just be another tool for designers and illustrators to achieve specific objectives.
As the world becomes smaller because of globalization, people crave things and experiences that are not from a template.. things that make them feel like their life is special and they are a unique … I think that is why the following are on the rise.. hand drawn type, non chain restaurants, limited edition silk-screens, local beers, local coffee shops, handmade books, self published music/writing, etc ..
Hand Lettering Interview
Hand Lettering Interview by Victoria Whincup
What makes you choose to draw your type by hand?
Reason 1 - Hand rendering gives a word a tone ..it tells the viewer how to interpret it on a subliminal level. Like a horror movie with music.. if you didn’t have the creepy music when someone walked into the basement … it wouldn’t be scary
Reason 2 - When I was a child I had a learning disability.. When I would try to read a book, my eyes would jump all over the page .. This forced me to see letters as forms/objects rather than the words they represented
When you are hand drawing type, do you think about drawing the word itself, or do you articulate individual letters?
I would say word .. most of my hand lettering is part of a bigger family .. I think if I focused on making each letter very unique .. it would be almost too stylized and distracting .. but there are always exceptions
When drawing a word, is the meaning and context always important, or just how it looks?
both .. sometimes the word can look conceptually like something the word is about .. and other times it just sets a mood .. how to interpret the word, happy, sad, energetic, etc
How important to you is the interplay of text and image?
very important .. I like mixing lettering with imagery.. I think they balance each other out .. imagery is very organic and letter forms are very mechanical .. each can provide information the other cannot.
Do you think fonts are improved if they are hand drawn?
It all depends what your objectives are .. there isn’t one solution for everything.
Why is there more hand lettering in design today?
Probably because it’s a response to the high-tech boom in the 90’s where everything was slick and highly polished. Now the pendulum has swung the other way .. Eventually it will return to the middle and both the ”high-tech” look and “hand drawn” look will just be another tool for designers and illustrators to achieve specific objectives.
As the world becomes smaller because of globalization, people crave things and experiences that are not from a template.. things that make them feel like their life is special and they are a unique … I think that is why the following are on the rise.. hand drawn type, non chain restaurants, limited edition silk-screens, local beers, local coffee shops, handmade books, self published music/writing, etc ..