DAY EIGHTEEN

Did this last year, so thought I’d make it again in 2010—going the chunky letters route.

DAY SEVENTEEN

This is for a couple getting married this summer—maybe a tattoo, maybe something to paint on the mailbox. But first, gotta fix the pesky x. (Not to mention the s). This was the first take. Need to start over on the x.

DAY SIXTEEN

A friend, Juno, drew this Kanye: Unabomber last year. I saw it again today, and created a simple title—eleven letters, tall, in a bit of a retro-deco style.

DAY FIFTEEN

Logotype-in-progress for a Southern Cal hairstylist.

DAY FOURTEEN

I’m not really sure what this looks like—some kind of white powdery substance?—but it started as ballpoint pen on paper.

DAY THIRTEEN

Horizontal abstract shape exercise that I flipped vertical and made into an R.

DAY TWELVE

Some numbers, done up nameplate-ish.

DAY ELEVEN

The retro letter style suggested signage so I took the vector and added some texture, and wrapped it in a beat-up metal frame. It would actually be fun to paint these letters, and outline them with gold leaf. Definitely gotta put sign painting on the list of things to learn in 2010.

(if I could go back in the process, i’d loosen the e-r combo.)

DAY TEN

Met up with four other designers—Kevin, Kevin, Garry, and Ryan—for dinner in Long Beach. We drank some beer, and later, talked type and lettering. Beers and beziers, not a bad combo. I didn’t take any pictures, but this is something that came from the get-together. (One of the designers works at Billabong). Gonna do another meetup soon—next one in Inglewood.

DAY NINE

A retail concept. First look at a bespoke mark for L.A. stylist Joey Tierney and her company, Haute Street. The lower line is modified Calisto MT.

DAY EIGHT

Everyone loves them some lowercase g. Hoping to screenprint this in the near future.

DAY SEVEN

These random letter explorations started off like gumballs (bottom), and after some massaging, ended up having a cholo vibe (top). This is an example of messing around with a blank canvas and seeing where the letters take you—not worrying about clients or how the letters will be used. This is fun. This is why I love working in Illustrator.

DAY SIX

A personal piece, mainly exploring the interesting stair-step of i-l-k, the pointy bowls, and the beauty of the letter M. The G-O-T is ITC Blair.

DAY FIVE

Remember outer bevel, inner glow, and that Alien Skin filter madness? Well, I’m starting to use inner glow again, the Illustrator version. I made some quick Frankfurter-looking sausage letters to spell out AlphaBattle, and then added some inner glow to give definition. (Maybe a minute in Photoshop after that.)

DAY FOUR

Work-in-progress logotype for a kick-ass L.A.-based moped club, The Fabulous Los Angeles Latebirds! Still working on this one, but I wanted to post the rough. Working out kinks on some of the curves, and the b-i connection was a last-minute thing, so the i needs some fixin’.

DAY THREE

I wanted to give a bit of a street-style mix to some upright script lettering, using letterforms that you might not normally see together.

DAY TWO

This is a new mark for Phiary (photo-diary), a photoblog community that is in development. The client, Jan, knew exactly what he wanted, which was awesome. He rebuffed my attempts to tone down the left-to-right tension. He also wanted a less-than-perfect dot on the i. I’ll also be creating some optimized versions of this, intended for small sizes on the web. Best of luck with Phiary, guys!

DAY ONE

The old LetterCult logotype (left) was a bit of a rush job—a pairing of some lettering, and a wood-ish typeface I’d made.

During the Fall of 2008, a week after launching our site, some guy wrote me an e-mail, specifically about the logo.

He didn’t like it. He even attached a sketch, fixing the logo. (center)

The guy’s name was Doyald Young.

At age 82, Doyald Young is our greatest living logotype designer. Before the LetterCult launch, I had the pleasure of interviewing him at his Sherman Oaks home. This was important to me, and I hoped, important to anyone interested in Custom Letters.

Doyald Young is the reason I went from someone who loved fonts, to someone who loves making letters. And if I hadn’t seen his books, there would be no LetterCult, no affinity for Custom Letters.

Six years ago, I’d stumbled upon one of his books and it was like the sky opened. Insight. Inspiration. Information. The Secrets of Letters in a beautifully bound book, to this day, the best book I’ve ever bought.

But now, here I was, doing a site about Custom Letters, and I had this flawed logotype, hated by Doyald himself. (He didn’t actually hate it, but, yanno.) I knew I needed to update it, but I finally decided to leave it alone. It was already out there. I’d have to wait.

A few weeks ago, while compiling the Best of 2009, inspiration came again. The sky again opened and awesome rained down, the amazing letters coming from our talented Custom Letters community. It was then that I decided that I’d try to fix the logotype.

I was exploring titles for the forthcoming Custom Letters PDF magazine (right), and Custom Letters got turned around to LetterCult. (bottom).

I’m really not liking the u and the top of the last t, and I’ll probably quietly fix those things soon. And maybe the symmetry is overdone.

I don’t know if Doyald has seen it, but if you see it suddenly disappear one night, you’ll know why.

***

So this is my first post on this blog.

In this spot, I’m going to try to make some Custom Letters Every Day. For the rest of 2010. Three hundred twenty days. Roughly an hour a day.

Pencil, ink, mouse, or carving something into a block a wood—gonna put something up, trying new approaches, and trying to improve in all areas. Even though I can’t obsess for days on a single piece, I’m gonna run with this format, and see where it goes.

***

I’ll also be showing various typefaces-in-progress. I’ve produced a huge stash of unreleased type. With some gentle urging from Veer—thanks Jon Parker, Joe Newton, and of course, Grant Hutchinson—I’ll be releasing dozens of fonts in 2010 as Veer exclusives. I’ll be showing them, as I flesh out the character sets. An Agency 26 collection should be out by mid-summer.

Thanks for taking a look.

brian

(this blog will be more images than words, so apologies for the wide column.)