The Typocondriac Newsletter S01E03 - The lockdown issue
The Lockdown Issue
Hello friends,
Many things happened since my last newsletter. I was supposed to send that newsletter earlier this month but the Covid-19 arrived in France and me and my family had to organize ourselves and get used to stay at home. So I am late and I apologize for that.
On the professional side, not much happened since April. I was supposed to release my new font but I takes ages, especially having to deal with OpenType features. But now the font is ready for beta testing. It has been a lot of work but I learned A LOT too. I will do a case study when the font is out. Hopefully I can announce it next month :-)
I have also reworked on Farandole. I had some feedback asking me how to change colors, which is not possible right now. So I thought it would be a good idea to try to make a layered color font out of it so people can use the colors they want. I am right now at the middle of the process.
On the training side, I had to cancel all my workshops. I really wanted people to be safe, and the french government announced the lockdown so I knew I took the good decision.
On my training side, I decided to take some time to learn a bit more about illustration. So I started a course on Domestika, taught by Steve Simpson, about mixing illustration and lettering. The project is to do a psychedelic illustration with some lettering inside. Not totally out of my comfort zone but still...
Back in February, I have started the 36 days of Type challenge on Instagram, and we are now going to start on numbers. I decided to work on a font that will be released soon after the challenge is done. I will have to rework some letters a bit but it should not take too long.
Staying on Instagram, I decided to spend more time on the platform. Having done a lot of projects for clients for years now, I never really trusted Instagram to get me great customers. But as I started creating typefaces, I realized that my biggest community was now on Instagram with nearly 20k followers.
So I started last week to give feedbacks everyday or nearly everyday for people would like to have one on their work. I did it for one week now and I really like it so far. I really want to give back to people. Also I think we should share more and help more. If you are interested, just post a story on Instagram with one of your work, tag me for a feedback and if I have anything to say, I will answer, also in a story :-)
To go a bit further, I would like to try to do Instagram lives soon. Not long but to help practice lettering and brush calligraphy. I would like to try this with a special live on "Brush Lettering for lefties". I will announce it on Instagram later this week.
For this month inspiration, we will stay mostly on Instagram. I wanted to highlight some of my favorite accounts lately. You may not know them and I really think you should follow them!
Let's start with Mel Cerri. Mel is an artist from Brazil. I have always loved a work but lately she does such a great job mixing Illustration and Lettering. The overall gives her work a fantastic identity and look how great these letters are!!!
Let's stay in Brazil and meet another great artist, Cyla Costa. Her work is crazy and so inspiring. I think I have been following her for 7/8 years now? Before on Behance and now on Instagram. She knows so well how to mix nice letters and colors. She is one of the best.
Now, let's go to Russia and meet Tamara Arkatova. I must say she is my biggest discovery on Instagram since a long time. She can play with letters like no one else. And it is always perfect and crazy. She is a fantastic inspiration for me. I think I also like her work because we seem to like similar styles, so it helps :P
If you follow me for some time, you know now how much I love graphic design from the 50s/70s, especially from the US and from the Cartoons industry. Lately I discovered the work of Ed Vill. His work is exactly what I would like to do. Maybe with an Outdoor orientation ^^ His characters are fantastic, he knows how to use great color palettes and his letters are always at the top! So check out his work, it is really worth it!
I already talked about Steve Simpson above, telling you I was taking his class on Domestika. I have been following Steve's work for some time now and it is so impressing and fantastic! The colors are here also fantastic and what I love about Steve's work is that you can see it's him just by seeing the colors. Another great person to follow...
Let's go on the Type Design side for a bit. Here is the work of Théo Guillard, a great type designer I discovered the work thanks to his typeface Grenat. It has everything I like. Bold and Display face!! I really like the experiments Théo does, so you should follow him too!! ;-)
Let's finish this selection by the account Christian P., alias "A Letter A Day" which is really amazing this year with his alphabet. Each day is fantastic and a great source of inspiration. Again, this is bold so I am happy :P
Let's close this month newsletter with some great work from Ben Johnston, Joan Quiros, Gina Serret and Kristine Arth. You can check their accounts by clicking on their respective work.
That is all for this month! Again, sorry for the delay, I hope you like that issue. It was way more lettering oriented! I don't know where we will be next month but take care of you and your family+friends. Be there for them. See you here next month or on Instagram these next days!
Cheers,
Francis