calligraphy Featured

Callivember 2024

In November of last year, I participated in the Callivember challenge. In case you are not familiar with it, there is a set of 30 words, 1 for each day, to write during the month of November. Any style and technique is fair game. (Technically, the guy who runs the

usability Featured

Hatch vs Nanit

I never thought I'd be comparing night lights, but here I am, after many hours of frustration with both products, putting down some thoughts about what would be a good design, and (spoiler alert!) why neither of the two that I bought is any good. My main use

case study

LLM designed packaging is here

I got a snack box on my Alaska flight from Seattle to Salt Lake City, and when I looked at the bag of chips, something seemed off. I could not immediately put my finger on it, so I started eating. And then about halfway through, it dawned on me: I’

usability

Thoughts on Cybertruck

You may love the way Cybertruck looks, or you may hate it, but one thing is certain: it does not go unnoticed. People actually stop and stare at it. One guy in Bellevue even spit his coffee back into his cup when I drove past. Cybertruck makes you feel like

calligraphy

Quaker marriage certificate

A few months ago, I was invited to a friends' wedding, and they asked me if I could create a marriage certificate for them. I've never done this before, but I figured it would be a nice challenge, so I said yes. Of course it turned out

calligraphy

It is real

This was in many ways an interesting project. I feel like I both made really good progress in terms of improving the quality of my letters (especially the O's), and that there are quite a few imperfections in the final version. I am choosing to let it be

design

Is my Starbucks cup angry at me?

The first assignment in my first design class was to use simple black shapes on white background to express different words, such as "small", "crowded", "angry", and so on. The key takeaway from that assignment was that pretty much anything could be expressed with

usability

Why Tesla's latest UI update is complete garbage

I've been pretty happy with my Tesla Model S for the past 7 years. The UI on the main screen has never been amazing, but it was acceptable, and I got used to it. This morning, I saw what the latest update did, and frankly it is a

lettering

The thin ice

Sometimes, I feel that books, movies, or even songs that were written years ago still resonate with the state of the world today. I was listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd, and for some reason this song really caught my attention this time around. So I decided to write

lettering

Ditch every idea

Back in January, I took a workshop called "Mix and Match: Calligraphy and Lettering as Design Tools" taught by Aline Kaori and Gui Menga. It was split into 4 sessions, 2 per week over 2 weeks. What appealed to me most was that instead of studying a particular

calligraphy

Callivember 2020

In November I participated in a calligraphy/lettering challenge. A list of 30 words was provided, one for each day. I did most of the prompts a day or two ahead of time, since there is not much daylight in November, and it is much harder to get a good

calligraphy

First Ideal of the Knights Radiant

The piece in this post is a quote from the "Stormlight Archive" series by Brandon Sanderson, which I started reading recently. In the story, there is a group called the Knights Radiant, and this text is known as their First Ideal. If you are not familiar with the

calligraphy

Built-up Capitals with Yves Leterme

In the spring and early summer, I had signed up for a Built-up Capitals class. Based on my previous experience with Yves' online classes, I figured I would not be able to learn all of the material presented, but at least I would learn something new, and improve my

calligraphy

Poem in a shape

This post was originally written in December 2019. In May 2020, I added a new version of the piece, and a section describing it, at the bottom. I have long been fascinated by the “Butterfly, Marine Mollusk, and Pear” page, which was created by Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Bocskay in

calligraphy

Card with raised design

The final assignment for my class was to make a custom card for another person in the group. Card recipients were assigned randomly, and we could ask them a few questions about their preferences. The person receiving my card said her favorite colors were burgundy and olive, and offered several

calligraphy

Blackletter cities

This week, I was studying fraktur capitals, and my homework assignment was to write out a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I chose to write a list of US cities. There are many different styles of writing that can be classified as "blackletter". For this

calligraphy

How to photograph calligraphy

When you create a beautiful piece, and want to share it with others, you need to take a good picture of it. While the photography part may sound daunting to some, there are actually just a few simple things to watch out for. I'm going to go over

calligraphy

From paper to digital

I've been studying calligraphy for almost 10 years now, and I found that depending on where you are geographically, it can either look like calligraphy is just another art class anyone can take, or like it's some special club where a selected few get to study

brush

My heart is in the work

When I was at the Cheerio workshop, there was one exercise that I did not finish. I had started working on a quote done in a pointed brush, but I simply ran out of time. This is what it looked like as part of my final project: When I got

calligraphy

Insular adventures

Inspired by my summer class on Uncials, I decided to apply the same approach of studying manuscripts carefully, and coming up with a hand that is grounded in history, and yet not archaic, to learning some insular majuscule. The Book of Kells is a magnificent manuscript to learn from. Not

calligraphy

Roman capitals with John Stevens

In October, I went to Cheerio for the first time to take a workshop with John Stevens on Roman capitals. First of all, I would like to point out that Camp Cheerio is in a beautiful place, and the view took my breath away. It was such a joy to

calligraphy

Uncials with Ewan Clayton

The biggest lesson I took away from this class is that there is no single Uncial alphabet, but instead there are different historic variations. We explored different manuscripts and came up with a self-consistent hand, where pen angle, stroke weight and letterform for each letter match the overall style. Of

calligraphy

The price of anonymity

I had a very interesting and unintentional experience with trying to sell my work anonymously. It all started with the Rendez-vous Calligraphy Conference. I wanted to enter a piece in the participant exhibit, and the only requirement was to make it an 8x8 inch square. I didn’t expect to

calligraphy

Flat file project

I needed a place to store my paper, so I found some used flat files online. They were operational, but a little beat-up on the outside. Given that they only cost 1/10 of what they would cost new, it was a pretty good deal. Still, looking at them made

class

Gilding with Peter Thornton

Gilding is another one of those things that I knew nothing about. It's one thing to admire someone else's beautiful work, and another to have a deep understanding of the techniques they used to create the piece. I will have to say right away that gilding