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[ Back to Hand Lettered by C. Iversen ]
Every sign painter of Dad's generation kept a book. His is a green
cloth ledger, nine by twelve, worn through at the corners, the first page
dated March 1946. The front half is alphabets, each one drawn with a brush
in black ink, a full set of capitals and lower case and numerals to a page,
with notes in pencil in the margins. The back half is layouts, sketches for
jobs, and the occasional grocery list. Inside the back cover is his 1952 price
list: truck doors, name and town, both sides, $15; gold leaf on glass, six-inch
letters, $1.50 a letter; barn and wall work, twenty cents a square foot.
I can't show you the book itself (no scanner, and I wouldn't trust it to
one), so here are the alphabets in words, with the nearest thing the computer
has where there is one. The computer's letters are cousins, not twins.
THE ALPHABETS
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ABCDEFG 123
1. Single-Stroke Gothic. The workhorse. Every stroke the
same width, no serifs, each stroke one pull of a flat quill. Trucks, prices,
barns, anything that has to be read in a hurry. His margin note: "Learn this
one first and learn it for life."
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2. Casual. The loose, friendly one-stroke letter with a
little lean to it, made by turning the flat quill on the curves. Showcards,
grocery specials, the "Pie Today" card at Cato's. Fast to letter, and it
looked fast, which was the point.
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ABCDEFG 123
3. Roman. Thick and thin, with serifs. The thick
strokes fall where a flat brush held at a slant makes them fall on its own,
which is why the letter feels so natural to paint once your hand learns it.
Banks, the funeral home, the church, doctors and
lawyers, and most of the gold windows.
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ABCDEFG 123
4. Egyptian (Dad called it "Antique"). Heavy letters with
square slab serifs, all the strokes nearly the same weight. The creamery,
the implement dealer, the barns along the highway. You can read it from a
quarter mile, which is what a barn is for.
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5. Script. Connected letters on a slant, made with a
pointed quill: press for the thick downstroke, ease off for the thin
upstroke. Cafes, the bakery, the beauty shop, the bride's car. His margin note
says "Never all capitals," underlined twice.
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6. Old English. The black, broken, cathedral-looking
letter. The church bulletin board, two wedding signs, and Malone's Tavern,
which wanted to look old. It takes three times as long as Gothic and he
charged accordingly.
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7. Tuscan. A circus and carnival letter with forked serifs
and a swelling in the middle of each stroke. The county fair, the Fourth of
July, and the school carnival every spring. The only alphabet in the book he
colored in, in red.
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THE RULES
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These are scattered through the margins in pencil. I've collected them and
put them in order. The words are mostly his.
- Find the main line. Every sign has one line that matters most. It
gets the biggest letters and about half the space. Nothing else on the sign
should be the same size as it, or the two will fight.
- Three styles at most, and two is better. One for the main line, one
for the rest, and a third only if you can say why.
- Space by eye, not by the ruler. Make the areas between the letters look
even, not the distances. Two straight letters side by side, like the H and I,
need the most room. Two round ones need the least. A, L, T, V, W and Y leave holes,
and you close them up.
- Round and pointed letters go a hair over the lines. O, C, G, S and Q
reach a little above the top guideline and below the bottom one; so do the
point of the A and the points of V and W. Otherwise they look short next to
the square letters.
- Crossbars go a little above the middle on E, F and H, and the top
bowl of B and the top of S are smaller than the bottom. Make them even and the
letters look top-heavy.
- Leave more margin at the bottom than the top. The eye puts the center of a
panel a little higher than the ruler does. And never crowd the edges. The
border is part of the sign.
- An inch of letter for every ten feet it has to be read from. On the
highway, double it.
- Contrast first, color second. His list of what reads farthest, tacked
inside the shop door: black on yellow, black on white, blue on white, green on
white, red on white, white on blue, white on red. "Yellow on white is for people
who don't want to be found."
- Rough it in with charcoal and wipe it off with a rag, as many times as
it takes. Don't fall in love with the first layout.
- As few strokes as you can. Every stroke you go back over shows.
- Spell it out on paper and have the customer sign it. This one has a
story behind it, involving a church supper, the word "Annual," and a lady who
was sure it had one N. He lettered it her way because she insisted, and he
lettered it again a week later at no charge. After that, everybody signed.
- Clean your brushes before you eat. He never broke this one, not even
at Thanksgiving.
WHAT I DO WITH IT
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Every fall my advanced art students letter one alphabet by hand, with a
flat brush and poster paint, before they're allowed near the computer lab. They
complain for two weeks. Then somebody gets a perfect R, and the room changes.
A few of them have gone on to work in sign shops and print shops, and one is
learning gold leaf from an old-timer in Des Moines. I sent him Dad's gilder's
tip. It seemed like the right place for it.
[ Back to Hand Lettered by C. Iversen ]
James Iversen ·
[email protected]
    
visitors to the Pattern Book
Last updated September 12, 1999
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