Back to School!

2010-09-05

What a flurry of activity for the Society and our members this Fall!  There is a record number of courses, workshops and demonstrations; check out the calendars (Society workshops and members’ activities) for registration details and to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

You can also meet and greet our members at several demonstrations that will be given this Fall, and at Society meetings.

Our members still have until September 16th to register for the upcoming exhibition. (rules and registration form)

Summer Days! (Part 2)

2010-08-01

To help you relax, we found an article that compares the “personalities” of various alphabets through graphology. Enjoy! We’ll be back in Fall.

Summer Days!

2010-07-04

Summer’s here, and the blog will take a break. We hope you’ll enjoy the summer, and to help inspire you here are a few suggestions of strange and unusual tools to test: balsa sticks, stones, toothpicks, feather dusters or feathers glued to a chopstick, construction blocks, pipettes…

After drinking a cool soda, why not create your very own cola pen? Here’s a basic cola pen (Spanish site, but the illustrations are easy to follow), and another slightly more complex.

If you’re brave enough, you can try to build a brush.

And for members of La Société, you can still register for the exhibition this fall (rules and registration form).

We’ll be back in the middle of summer with light entertainment. The regular blog will return in September. Have a very nice summer!

Neuland

2010-06-27

Last week we examined the Textura, so this week we decided to present something a bit more contemporary, and the contrast couldn’t be bigger. While the Textura family of styles are quite hard to read nowadays, the Neuland, created in the 20th century by Rudolph Koh,  is famous for its clear, poster-like letters. We posted a workshop summary  that has a few good tips for the Neuland alphabet.

Fraktur and Co.

2010-06-20

Beyond the rigid Textura, there are tons of variations: Fraktur, Bastarda and Rotunda are well known, but there is also the Schwabacher, proto-gothic scripts, etc.

A German site compares three of the styles;  you can also click at the bottom of the page for facsimiles (reading exercises). Another site discusses the tradition and history of Fraktur in America. You can delve into our older posts for links to manuscripts, including the Swiss Electronic Library, full of Bastarda scripts from various countries, and the Cary Collection, with manuscripts in Rotunda (round gothic), Textura (angular gothic) and Bastarda (gothic cursive).

On the internet, sometimes the best samples are typographical versions; don’t hesitate to look up calligraphy and illumination books at your local library to unearth more legible facsimiles.

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