Rope of Words 8 - the text 1

In the beginning I wondered about how to do the text. Letterpress is wonderful but not possible for me, although I felt that screenprinting it would be good because I can do a limited edition of the book that is hand printed in ink on paper.

So, the choice of text: I know I want a large capital letter and probably two columns of writing. My first thought was to use the font called Travelling Typewriter because it is an honest font and it has a feel that it has been manually created. (Of course, one could philosophise and say nonsense, because it is a digital version of a typewriter)

So I tried a page using it. Apart from the fact that it was too jazzy for my eyes in such a large block of text, by then I was visualising simpler more abstract illustrations and this font was wrong for my new vision.

Back to the drawing board. What I would really like to do is work with text like I used in my watercolour book "Colours of the Kalahari". Here is a photo. It is in pencil using pressure-release, but it doesn't even photograph well - as you can see - so I have no chance of getting that effect using screen printing.

So now perhaps it's time to create a font based on this. I'm quite excited about this idea and phoned Philip Kelly who has worked with a number of calligraphers.

---

Share||