B.U.S.K. — You may have noticed the combination of letters before. The
name/alias of one of Austria’s most prolific alternative artists appears all over. Different cities, different mediums of choice, different approaches. From spray paint, to paste ups, to folded paper, to type design. His love for typography and lettering arose around 1995 and since then, he has continued to amaze with his (art)works and stunning output.
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HE LEFT JAPAN, LEFT HIS FAMILY, and found himself at a little-known art school in Maine, the coldest place he could ever imagine.
Satoru Nihei, aka Mr. Beautifool, has never followed a traditional path.
His parents are proud teachers—he’s a high-school dropout.
He landed a job with Gento Matsumoto, a legendary designer in Japan—he left the job and moved to the United States.
He went to art school—and found he had a passion for graphic design.
The zigs and zags finally formed a career path, and everything crystallized four years ago when Satoru met 3st’s Rick Valicenti, one of the industry’s most respected designers.
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CARS, SKULLS, FLAMES AND Kustom Letters.
For 15 years, Dave Parmley and Eric Ruffing have been holding things down in the Action Sports, Entertainment, and Gaming Industries, leading 13THFLOOR Design with a mix of youthful exuberance and a commitment to Keeping things Kustom—they spell it with a K.
“We don’t stress, it’s fun,” says Ruffing. “But we take what we do very seriously for ourselves and the client’s sake.”
Parmley was working as Design Director at surf giant O’Neill in the early ’90s when he hired Ruffing. The two bonded quickly.
“Eric and I have always worked really well together—no ego, best idea wins,” Parmley says. “We found this chemistry…and that’s a big reason we started 13THFLOOR together.”
13THFLOOR has emerged as a go-to resource among Action Sport companies, and both Ruffing and Parmley continue to mountain bike, bmx, and surf the breaks in Orange County, CA, staying in touch with their core audience.
Lately, they’ve been doing a lot of work for Mattel, Hot Wheels, Harley Davidson, X-Games, and Fox Sports. With each piece, they set out to create Kustom Letters.
“We must create our own type solutions,” Ruffing says. “No fonts.”
interview conducted via ICHAT
So you guys left O’Neill and decided to work for yourself. What factors led you to do that?
Eric: I left first, then Dave left about 6 months after me. Dave: It was time to move on—we had done a LOT there and the surf industry life-cycled, O’Neill was having some problems and the creative opportunities weren’t as ripe as the previous years. As a friend of mine once said, “When it ain’t fun anymore, it’s time to leave.”
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ASERIES OF FORTUNATE EVENTS nudged Mark Simonson in the right direction, the type direction, and from there, his considerable abilities took over.
Back in 2000, Simonson launched his own shop, specializing in lettering and typography. But when it came to type design, he was a hobbyist. A dabbler.
That all changed thanks to some remarkable occurrences—a few good connections, a well-timed type convention, an indie font book, the emergence of e-commerce, and a dash of Regis Philbin.
Simonson rode the momentum and now designs type full time, inspired by a love of letters, their history, and a fascination with angles and curves. He has more than 100 fonts on the market, and in a way, he’s just getting started.
“Making fonts for a living is a life-long dream,” Simonson says.
Simonson, now living the dream, picks up the story of how events unfolded, taking us back to 2000.
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THIS PAST SUMMER, AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY student Gemma O’Brien came down with a severe case of Typomania.
Talking about it, reading about it, only made it worse.
She couldn’t shake it. So she embraced it.
“My interest in letters and typography became obsessive,” she says. “I began doing more readings on the history of printing and typography. And then everywhere I looked was letters. EVERYWHERE! And they are so exciting! Soon i was writing on FedEx boxes, fruit, myself, and who know’s what next?”
O’Brien adopted the moniker, Mrs. Eaves, and started a blog, For the Love of Type, where she began to show her type and lettering experiments.
She put one such experiment—Write Here, Right Now—on YouTube. The video shows O’Brien writing Write Here Right Now on her body with black marker, homage to designer Stefan Sagmeister.
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HIS BODY OF WORK IS SO ELEGANT, SO DISTINCTIVE, so perfect, that it transcends logo design, transcends the craft of making letters, and rises to a higher place, a place where letters dance with art.
But you wouldn’t know this by talking to Doyald Young.
Young walks across the living room of his Sherman Oaks home, sets down a book, and sits across from a visitor. He wears jeans and a dress shirt.
Young is exceedingly gracious. I’m here to interview him, but instead, Young asks me questions and listens intently. He doesn’t talk about himself, his work, or his books.
His modesty is memorable.
Eventually, we do discuss his new book, Dangerous Curves, a self-published retrospective featuring hundreds of his sketches—logotypes, monograms, titles, and typefaces. 
The book is a dazzling exhibition of Young’s skill with a pencil, his discipline, his knowledge of form and nuance, and his affinity for beautiful curves.
If Matthew Carter is the greatest living type designer, and Hermann Zapf the greatest living calligrapher, Young completes the trinity as the greatest living designer of logotypes.
Young’s influence is widespread. Besides his actual work, for a variety of big-name clients, Young has had a profound impact as an educator. In 30+ years at Art Center in Pasadena, California, he has taught more than 4,000 students, instilling in them the attention to detail taught by his teacher, Mortimer Leach. He’s lectured extensively, and his books have become the de facto textbook for many instructors teaching typography and lettering.
The books themselves are special. Young designs the books, oversees the high-quality printing in Hong Kong, and distributes and markets them himself. His last three books have all drawn high praise.
Lettering artist John Langdon called Fonts & Logos “the bible, the map, and the Rosetta Stone for those who would carry this low-profile high art into the twenty-first century.”
At age 82, Young continues to draw letters and logotypes, gives lectures, teaches an occasional class, and often, he says, you can find him in the role of shipping clerk, standing in line at the post office to send out more book orders.
I ask him if another book is in his future, and he smiles. “You never know.”
this portion of the interview conducted via e-mail
How has Dangerous Curves been received?
I’m delighted to say that the reviews have been enthusiastic and I’ve sold cold copies in Scotland, Ireland, England, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, Dubai, Australia, New Zealand, Okinawa, Japan, China, Brazil, and as far north as Yellowknife, Canada.
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JON CONTINO HAS NO HESITATION when naming his biggest influence: It’s The City. New York City, a comforting presence, a constant source of inspiration.
“My whole life I’ve been surrounded by incredible design, architecture, fashion, and, most importantly, graffiti,” Contino says. “I don’t know how I’d ever be where I am today without it.
“My environment definitely had a massive part in shaping me as an artist and I really can trace it back all the way to my very early childhood. I would have very little style if it wasn’t for New York and all the incredible people that live and work here.”
Two years ago, Contino left a full-time job to start his own design studio, Onetwentysix, based in New York. His clients include ESPN, The Brooklyn Circus, Russell Simmons, and Marc Ecko.
Do you remember when you first became obsessed with letters?
I remember I was always obsessed with letters, but didn’t realize it was an obsession until a few years ago. I dug up a few sketchbooks and drawing pads from my kindergarten days and found pages and pages of “my own alphabet” type things and Major League sport team typesets scribbled everywhere. That’s when it hit me that I had an obsession on my hands.
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IWAS TALKING TO SOMEONE THE other day, someone who was confused by this site. He thought LetterCult was a site about custom lettering.
Not quite. I explained that this is a site about Custom Letters and the people who make them. A semantic difference, but worth noting.
Custom, in this case, meaning built or drawn from scratch.
Most people making letterforms are making Custom Letters, from the type designer to the sign painter to the meathead carving names into trees with a Rambo knife.
So that’s what we are doing here, chronicling those who make a choice to do something custom, something original, something distinctive.
A few weeks ago, another person asked in a chat, “What’s with the cult thing? And when do we get our paper cups of Kool Aid?” followed by 
Cult is clearly a pejorative, but not here. Cult is just a shorthand way of saying culture, LetterCulture, and also a group bound together by the same ideals.
Those ideals are embodied by the great designers and artists doing amazing things with letterforms.
During the past two months, we’ve asked people about the Death of Lettering, or the Dearth of Lettering, and a simple truth has emerged: Letters are alive and kickin’.
Kickin’ ass.
And through workshops, classes, books, and the internet, the next generation has started to figure it out: The best designers and artists distinguish their work through great typography, great lettering, great letters.
Over the next week, we’ll publish some interviews to kick off the site. Most of the interviews were conducted in early August, but it took us a while to get things going. We’ll keep adding content on a regular basis, maybe a couple times a week. Contributors are welcome.
Thanks for visiting, bookmarking, rss-ing, and all that! If you link us, a thousand thanks.
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