But how can ink add impact? It’s just the words that count right?
When I first learned the art of Calligraphy from Professor Howard Glasser at UMass Dartmouth (UMD), I was very much focused on the technical aspects of letter formation and spacing, the core to recreating a typeface hundreds of years old. At that time the tools at hand were simple – Speedball nibs and black ink (plus fun – if I learned one thing from Howard over the years it was to have fun – he insisted on it). As a student, black ink was great for seeing your mistakes in both formation and spacing, but a bit lacking in visual interest. The semester progressed and we moved on to working with Gouache (opaque watercolor) and while that added some color it was not until I began to work with colored inks that I saw the real energy that could be produced with a simple stroke of the pen. Howard would walk by, hover over my shoulder and nod in approval then just as quickly tell me to get up and proceed to blow my mind with his ability to write Gothic Blackletter with the same effort I needed to blink.
At first I was working with fairly cheap mass produced inks, but as my interest grew I continued looking for colors that really added a layer of interest to my designs. Take an ink like Noodler’s Apache Sunset – one of the more widely lauded “shading” inks out there. The speed you work at, or number of passes with your pen, creates a wonderful blend of yellows, oranges, and many combinations between depending on how the ink settles. This adds another layer of interest to your message based on how it draws the eye in.
The nice thing about certain letterforms is that their construction forces you to overlap previous strokes and this allows those shading properties to manifest naturally as a part of creating the letter – not forced after the fact to achieve the effect. Gothic typefaces are great for this – the ornamental nature of the forms creates plenty of potential spots for the ink to work it’s magic. The learning curve is now not just about hitting your marks as you create the letter, but also the speed with which you do it – each variation introducing more energy into the word.
As I think back, Howard was right – it’s still about the fun. While my 9-to-5 is wrapped in HTML, Photoshop, UI/UX and too many meetings, my need to decompress always begins with a pen in my hand and an idea that the paper in front of me needs to share.