The earliest work I was ever hired to do was little clever word drawings for friends in high school. As I recall, hand-drawn lettering was all I did in the earliest stages of my career. Eventually, I started to include imagery (found or created) and the larger design interest emerged from that.

I view typography as construction. I BUILD type forms. I’m not a calligrapher, but when I use calligraphy, it’s not drawn with a writing tool (like a pen), but literally constructed as built letterforms that just happen to echo calligraphy in visual form. It’s a trick. As a kid, I collected comic books. I built monster model kits. I watched a lot of pop television. That is where I was initially exposed to typography. The idea of “fine” typography is something I was exposed to decades later as a student. Then I just gravitated toward that look because it was what I was told was «good.» But as I got older and wiser, I walked away from what academia told me was acceptable, and just did what my clients wanted.

I no longer consider myself a typographer. Computers changed the rules so much that everybody could do adequate typography with little or even no training, so I stepped back in time to building letterforms by hand with found materials and imagery. I enjoy saying I no longer «do» typography, I do LETTERIN’!

Art Chantry.