hand lettering

cafe logo/identity

Last week completely out of the blue I received an email from an editor at HOW magazine she was working on an article on hand lettering and would like to feature little ol' me and my typographic wares in the article - Shut Up ! - to say I was thrilled to pieces by this request would be an enormous understatement. It felt like a big ol' shot of happy juice swallowed with a few tablets of vim, vigour and let's do it ! spirit. My work has been featured on the HOW magazine blog here and here another huge thrill - hanging out with some tres impressive company. This is a fantastic opportunity and I have been mildly (ha ha) stressing myself out trying to decide which 6 of my hand lettering pieces to send and/or what other mind blowing typographic creations might I whip up just for this opportunity. The deadline is today so very soon time (or the lack there of) will help me out with this fretful decision making.

So ... along with my regular projects which thankfully I have plenty o' going on here at the teak topped desk this last while I've been fussin' and mussin' over which 6 examples of hand lettering that I'm going to submit at the end of day today. This logo is actually one I did years ago when I first moved to this little village and at that time was working a regular 9-5 stint at a big giftware company as a product designer/creative director here dans this little village. Even with a full time job I always did my fair share of freelance graphic design and this cafe logo has always been a favourite of mine. Yesterday I cleaned it up a little, changed the colours and got it ready to place in the pile of possible and maybe type treasures to submit.

There's also a short list of questions to answer and send back and it's funny now that I've had over a week to ponder this hand lettering skill (and love) of mine. Where did it come from ? and what were and are my inspirations ? I realize I've been a little typographer since way back, long before I'd ever heard that word. I used to enter every poster contest going as a child (and won most of them). My grandmother Flo (an artist and a big, big influence on me and my creativity growing up) and I used to make wall hangings, spread out on her giant dining room table, using brightly coloured glued felt shapes and designs on burlap, we'd glue sequins (for bullets) and ric rac (still a favourite of mine) instead of rules and bars, little typographic elements and embellishments out of sewing notions and many of my little wall hangings would very often include words, brightly coloured felt letters hand cut with scissors - really profound words like Boy and Cat. ;-)

I often think and hope that she is looking down at me from her cloud and smiling ... and just maybe, she's been keepin' company with the red + yellow dogs