What Lettering Style Is That?!
Nerding out on some lettering and type terminology this week.
Last week, we had a wedding in the family! In all my gift-making, I got a little distracted and took a brief departure from the course I was taking. At some point, I found myself thumbing through LETTERING MANUAL by Ken Barber and focusing on some terms I thought it was time for me to learn.
It takes me a while to truly digest new material and I knew this book would make me come back to it again and again to chew on a few things. This time, it happened to be lettering styles, models, and the modification of letterforms. If you follow me on IG, you may have seen a few of my experiments. But, in this post, I’m going to keep it to classifying lettering styles.
This is a copy I made of a model called Ad Roman. It’s a modernized Old Style alphabet. You can tell it’s derived from Old Style alphabets because of the bracketed, angled serifs and the weight stress, etc. This version of the model has been modernized by increasing the contrast to make it more modifiable.
Why bother with classifying lettering styles?
Is there really a reason? According to Mr. Barber, there’s no set standard for them anyway. So what’s the point?
When lettering for fun’s sake, it may not matter much. But, when lettering for others or for purposes other than just the joy of it, I think it matters to have a working knowledge of it for general purposes.
Also, I’ve learned that it’s just really easy to get caught up in the styles we like most. But, the basis of lettering, to me, is about communicating ideas, irrespective of the style…and according to Mr. Barber, the best lettering artists get to know a handful of lettering styles really well and then exploit the bejeezus out of them. For that, you may need to know at least a little bit about type anatomy or how to classify styles…Or even just which ones work best together or how to evoke certain moods or eras. It makes you a more effective artist and communicator overall.
Plus, you could just be a geek…and that’s okay too.
For instance, I’ve always been fascinated by how designers choose letter styles (fonts, etc.) in their work. Sometimes, the pairing of the style, the concept and the execution is so elegant it makes me feel kinda warm and fuzzy inside. Weird, right?
But, if you think about it…You would not use the same style of letters for the announcement of your baby on, say the logo for a race car. So, yes, it’s a little geeky. But, it’s also just common sense to learn a little about it so you don’t muck something all the way up.
That being said, Mr. Barber’s handful is pretty sizable! He discusses about 16 lettering styles in his book. They are listed below with my notes to help me remember them.
Inscriptional - Resembles the chiseled letters in Roman monuments
Blackletter - Resembles letters made from broad nibs in calligraphy
Old Style - Weight stress typically at 8:00 and 2:00, smooth, transitioning bracketed serifs (Caslon)
Chancery Italic - Sloped letters
Modern - Vertical axis, uniform, high contrast, abrupt, simple serifs
Slab Serif - Little to no contrast, heavy serifs. (Tuscan, Ionic, and Latin can also fit under this umbrella sometimes)
Fat Face - Extreme weight on thicks, modern (high contrast, abrupt, simple serifs)
Ionic - Medium contrast, bracketed serifs. (Clarendon)
Latin - Triangular serifs (sometimes considered slab serif, sometimes inscriptional 🤷🏾♀️)
Reverse-Contrast - Weight on horizontal strokes, thin verticals
Tuscan - Bifurcated serifs
Miscellaneous - Anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories
Casual Script - Connected scripts, warm, friendly, and informal
Brush Script/Brush Roman - Resembles letters made with brushes
Sans Serif - No serifs
Roundhand - Formal script, graceful joins, flourishes, etc.
This week, I spent time making sure I could recall these styles and a few facts about each.
This one below is a Tuscan style. It could also be considered Slab Serif.
The awareness alone has caused me to look at the lettering art I see as well as the lettering art I’ve done differently. Now, I want to distinguish which style is being used underneath the embellishments…and maybe even get at why. It makes me look at pieces I’ve done that I felt worked well to see why the style served the piece…It also makes me look at pieces that could have worked better to see why the style I used maybe didn’t evoke the feeling I was after.
I mean, just because the letters look nice, doesn’t mean the intention was clear. They could still miss the mark for the overall message. That’s a lettering fail. We don’t want that!
What might using this information look like?
Good question!
I’m sure this discussion could go wayyy further…but let’s look at some possibilities…
Let’s say you tend to gravitate toward vintagey-looking lettering styles like me. But, maybe the lettering you’ve just done doesn’t appear as aged as you’d like. You could always put a texture on it. But, that’s just adding an embellishment on something that doesn’t stand on its own and may not work in the end anyway. When you look at the actual letters, maybe, in those instances, it could have been that the letters were a little to uniform, too contrasty, or the articulation between the serif and the stem was too abrupt, as in more Modern-looking, more sophisticated styles. Maybe the work would be served better by a little less contrast, a more humanistic feel to the strokes and some other adjustments (not that there aren’t vintage styles that have instances of uniformity or sharper contrast…it’s just a starting point to look at your letters more critically).
Or, maybe you are more “avant-garde” and want to take a bold departure from typical letterforms into the territory that deconstructs what historical lettering has been about to create something less conforming. Since most of the strokes in lettering attempt to mimic those made with nibs or brushes, maybe it’d be best to avoid using any nibs or brushes-or any other tool for writing or drawing altogether! Introduce a new mark, introduce a new tool, you know?
Using this knowledge may also result in tons more sketching before starting, since using it purposefully may not come about as naturally as free-styling something or just going with the styles we know and use all the time. But, it may also help to create an even stronger piece of lettering than what was initially imagined.
At the end of the day…it is still a lot to digest and I’m only just understanding it in pieces. But it’s a good start.
“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” ~Michelangelo
This ain’t painting right now…But you get my meaning.
As the saying goes, knowledge is power.
