Hand Lettering Book - free pdf download available.

To escape the wet and cold weather on the Altiplano de Granada, we took a mini break in the equally cold and wet Axarquia region. We took a day trip to a favourite haunt of ours to enjoy a curry and a stroll around a second hand book shop in Nerja on the Costa del Sol near Malaga. Imagine my surprise when I unearthed a copy of Studio Handbook Lettering by Samuel Welo, which was for sale at far, far less (€7.50) than the $95 price tag at abebooks.com. The book is available for free download as a .pdf file here.
I scanned a page into XDP and had a go at the example attached with the shape tool.
Bob.

That was very interesting to look at Bob, Thanks for sharing the link :) Now it makes me want to dig out my calligraphy pens and some ink :)

Thanks Bob! What an interesting book!

Many years ago, in high school, I thought about becoming a commercial artist... but knew that I could never hand-letter the small text on packaging. Nobody told me about typesetting. Moved to New York when I was 18, stumbled into a job at an ad agency, DD&B. In the early '60s, people were still doing hand-lettering, for headlines now and then... and offset printing made it very easy to bring in the custom text. And you had to be able to draw letters quickly and fairly accurately, when you made a comp for a presentation. But that was then.

The last hand-drawn, hand-lettered comps I made were for a client, a publisher, here in San Diego -- around 1980 -- who used them to sell magazine projects to several baseball teams. Pic below shows a comp and the resulting print cover. Incredibly easier now -- particularly with XDP or P&GD -- to quickly make the design. Computers are absolutely wonderful for graphic artists!

Quote:

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Moved to New York when I was 18, stumbled into a job at an ad agency, DD&B.

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That was the agency to stumble into in the 60s with the legendary Bill Bernbach and the game changing advertising for Volkswagen and all the rest.