Mix and Match: Calligraphy and Lettering as Design Tools

Our special guests from Brazil will bring inky, hands-on fun, using custom letterforms to explore their expressive potential in branding, advertising, or personal projects.

How can we shape letterforms to tell different stories?

Over four consecutive Wednesday evenings (September, 8, 15, 22, and 29), students will learn different methods to create custom letterforms and explore their expressive potential. We’ll bridge the gaps between writing, drawing, and designing by mixing calligraphy and lettering techniques — while looking into how design decisions can affect the story that’s being told.

Get ready to get inky! Students will have a hands-on experience, from playing with a wide range of calligraphic tools and shapes to learning how to refine and finalize a wordmark — ready to be applied as a logotype, book cover/movie title, or part of an advertisement campaign, poster, album cover, and so on.

Gui and Aline will guide you through every step of the fun process of exploring letterform variations, offering inspiring visual references, instructional content, live demonstrations, and supporting you during this journey through Q&As and feedback.

This workshop is open to all levels — both beginners and more advanced students are sure to get a kick out of the experiments and learn about the different processes for letterform-making.

Designers will learn the potential of letterforms in visual communication through hands-on exploration.

Lettering artists and type designers will benefit from adding a calligraphic foundation of unconventional forms into their ideation and workflow.

Calligraphers can explore letterforms further through the lettering and refinement processes, and even incorporate these back into their writing.

Required Materials

• Felt-tip brush pen (preferably dark; recommended brands: Tombow dual, Sakura Koi or Faber-Castell)
• Parallel pen (preferably 3,8 mm—green cap) or closest felt-tip kind (like Zig, Staedtler Calligraphy, Sakura Calligrapher)
• Any soft pencil (for outlines and filling shapes)
• Any medium black marker like Sharpie
• Tracing paper or vellum, A4/Letter size
• Bond paper or any 90 gsm+ paper, A4/Letter size
• A phone, camera, or scanner to capture work
• A computer to watch the classes on and do basic photo editing

Optional

• Calligraphy inks, Higgins Eternal, or Pelikan 4001 Ink (preferably black). Sumi, India ink, and gouache are okay too (though not for use with the parallel pen)
• Any other calligraphic tools that you might have and wish to experiment with (e.g.: cola/ruling pen, pointed and broad-edged nibs or brushes, markers, toothbrushes!, tree sticks!, etc)

Don’t worry too much if you don’t have one or two items, a specific size, or cannot get them for any reason; this will not be an impediment to taking the class. The idea of this workshop is to encourage experimentation with the tools we have, and you can try some of the specific demonstrated materials/techniques at a later time when you are able to acquire them. Feel free to reach out to the instructors if you have any doubts or concerns.

Diversity and Equity Scholarship

Diversity and Equity are important to all of us at Letterform Archive, and we are committed to increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups within the type and design communities.

We are offering one BIPOC/Equity scholarship seat in this workshop.

To apply for this scholarship, please complete and submit to us the short form linked here a week prior to the start of the workshop.

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