LetterCult Kickoff

by Beejay on September 24, 2008


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.

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1

Stephen Coles 09.25.08 at 12:18 pm

Congrats, BJ! And kudos for calling it what it is. Here’s to moving away from using the word “type” for lettering.

2

maxwell lord 10.02.08 at 3:16 pm

I really dig the whole idea of the site, thanks for bringing some really interesting stuff! keep it up :)

3

Gary Manzo 06.20.09 at 9:52 pm

Lettering? Look up the artist David Spiller. Much of his work is about lettering, and it has a strange effect, on me in any case. It’s like my brain has to work differently to make sense of the pure visual interest of his works and what the message is in Written Language.

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