This Is How I Started LetteringGuy

I wanted in on this blog game. I started a WordPress blog called Handlettering Cite. I created a new hand lettering design a day. I lettered quotes and proverbs I found on the internet and in books. I invited friends to contribute. I hoped to attract lettering artists and lovers of the art as contributors. I interviewed lettering artists I worked with at American Greetings and lettering artists whose work I admired online.

I lettered daily. I started with lettering styles I learned from my time at American Greetings. I looked for quotes and proverbs from leaders, luminaries, inventors, celebrities, and cultures. Early in my effort I came across a piece of lettering by a design studio in New Zealand. It influenced me to move in a new lettering direction. I explored monoline letters through contrast of scale and style. When I felt I exhausted that direction I grabbed a pointed pen and explored another stylistic direction.

From the experience and intuition came a style that I use to this day. It’s inky, inconsistent and blobby. I created a Thanksgiving theme and I used old vintage signs as a visual theme for a series of quotes. My lettering is a combination of print and script. It works with my illustration style of rough and textured line art. It makes me happy.

I thought the blog’s title, Handlettering Cite, was fitting. I was lettering quotes and proverbs then citing the authors of the texts. Over time the blog changed. I stopped creating lettering designs in favor of interviews with lettering artists. I decided to change the name of the blog to Lettering Guy. I was the lettering guy who was interviewing lettering amateurs and pros. I met some interesting lettering artists from around the world. One interview was used by a calligraphy guild in Australia, another was picked up by the blog, Boing Boing, and Lettering Guy was a reference site for a college design class in San Francisco.

Despite my grand design blogs were making way for social media streams. I shut down the WordPress version of Lettering Guy in 2018. The interviews live on this Lettering Guy website. Handlettering Cite aka Lettering Guy had a great influence on my work. It taught me to stay focused. It taught me discipline was its own reward. It showed me that I’m an artist.