Hand Lettering and Design at SVA

It's been a week since my hand-lettering class ended at The School of Visual Arts taught by Natalya Balnova. I literally can't stop filling up notebooks and random scraps of paper, brushing up on calligraphy and sign painting.

It's always been a dream to a take a class like this because of a life-long obsession with logos. I got my hands on the Letraset Graphic Art Materials Reference Manual in high school and it's been off to the races since.

This obsession with logos began to refocus on the art of Lettering itself when I started taking these Lettering Walks with author, historian, and designer, Paul Shaw around NYC. (For more see Lettering Walk with Paul Shaw: Elmhurst & Corona and Lettering Walk with Paul Shaw: Financial District.)

I didn't realize the sheer volume of hand-lettered materials we created in such a short amount of time until I started to assemble this post (a handful of which are featured here). The sketches of concepts not used are as important to the process as the finished pieces.

It was structured with tons of rapid-fire in-class exercises and usually three homework assignments between classes that I took far as I could. This was as much about the look and feel of each letter as it

was about the placement and size.

You didn't have time to overthink anything, just pure lettering. Even the homework was carried out at a frantic and desperate pace. The final project just about gave me a panic attack! Every critique was memorable and by the end of this Summer Session, I realized the cumulation of these critiques totally guides my approach in a profoundly different and meaningful way.

Some of these were hits, most were misses, but to the idea that your 10,000th bit of carefully designed and executed lettering is going to be significantly better than the first, we covered a lot of ground.

This class is highly recommended, I would take it again in a heartbeat! I got a chance to try and retry every kind of method of integrating hand-made things with the computer. I made all the spatters, textures, and painted backgrounds for this class.

This was an idea for the 2018 Woodside World's Fair, showcasing our technological breakthroughs in transportation and industry. It looks East up Roosevelt Avenue to the new 61st. Tower Station where international visitors, local residents, and businesspeople work, travel, and co-mingle at the intersection of the MTA 7 Train and the Long Island Railroad. This world-class marvel connects Manhattan to Queens to all of Long Island. I would still like to do this one someday.