Words on Lettering, History and Education
Recently saw a new article written by Mark Simonson who, besides being the letter responsible for the work on the left, is one of the big names in type these days with his appearance in everything from small blogs to HOW magazine. The article was something that I think is a hilariously common thing in the design world: mistaking hand lettering with fonts.
Simonson goes on in his writing to talk about a brief history of type evolution, from metal pressmen and sign painters to today’s use of fully editable fonts. It touches on something I want to talk about here. From my experience there seems to be little interest among designers and basic schooling on history in the graphic arts and lettering.
This is not a font, this is an example of hand lettering. photo via Flow14 - Flickr
In school, I was forced to take Art History and the History of Graphic Design, which at first I thought useless until about my junior year when I realized that knowing about what has been done and what past designers have learned about communication was of great importance to any contemporary graphic designer. Soon after I fell in love with the history of my profession and aim to learn as much about it as I can.
It’s a shame to see designers who are said to be my peers and recent graduates who have little or no idea about the history of this profession or even care to investigate at all. One symptom of this is what Mr. Simonson writes about – assuming all lettering are from fonts. Yes, there are plenty of fonts that provide great lettering (not scripts, but lettering) like House, P22 and other great foundries, but the best lettering is done by the hand of skilled designer.
This is something even I’ve suffered on. Looking back I wish that I could have had a class in lettering and proper type drawing. Yes, it may be a bit obsolete, but I’ve run into many situations that it could have really helped me. In fact, my schooling in typography was what I consider now to be above average, which is in contrast to the rest of the education I received (excellent).
Things like lettering, creating fonts, using picas and points as measurement tools and not just annoying redundancies left over from type’s past are all things that I’ve had to learn myself through minds like Leslie Cabarga, Robert Bringhurst and the study of type itself.
It’s not like these things will just fall into place. Designers pay all kinds of money for education only to receive a primer on design. Had I not looked to teach myself as much as possible on design I’d probably be working at a print shop as a productions artist, leaving the real work for the pro’s.
In short: what education doesn’t teach you, you need to teach yourself. Otherwise you’ll end up being someone who asks silly questions to the big boys (and looking silly yourself).
