A Fun and Funky Alphabet

Well, I’ve been playing again…. 

Designing another alphabet, it seems.  :)

You see, I surf the Internet and look at all these blogs and even artwork on Etsy with all sorts of quotes lettered on them by artists who, I’m sure, do not consider themselves calligraphers at all.

And their lettering intrigues me...

Armed with only a Sharpie, it seems, they produce letters with so much variety and contrast!  It has such a fresh liveliness to it, and they are solving lettering “problems” with no calligraphic background at all, and they do such a great job!

So I decided to pretend that I was in their shoes, faced with the same design constraints, and see what kind of lettering I would come up with.  So, with a Sharpie in hand, this is basically what I designed:

It seems to be Italic-ish in nature, with the boldness coming from triple-stroking certain parts of the letters.    Maybe even 4 strokes wide, depending on the tool.  (usually the stems, but not always)

And while I am still completely addicted to Peter Thornton’s Casual Caps (!), this new alphabet is a lot of crazy fun, too!  It can be done really really big--something I don’t usually do.  And it has a sort of “funky” look to it, and is just terribly fun to do!

It isn’t elegant at all, but I suppose there is a place for that, too.

Here are some another example:

And it’s really fun to do with all those colorful Sharpies they have out there now.  The way Sharpies bleed a little on the paper make the building-up of the fat stroke easier and fun.

On this one, I used a super Sharpie, black,  and left it plain.  Next to it, though, I “shadowed” the lettering with a Gelly Roll sparkle pen.  (no color, just sparkle)  

Okay, this is really too much fun!

I hope you try this out someday…  And, it’s travel-friendly!

XOXO,

Lucky Dog 
♥