I was contacted awhile ago to do the cover book jacket lettering for a book called "Breath." The book at last check was in limbo, the author undecided between the hundreds of versions of this word he had commissioned from calligraphers around the world. This is a word that has been done many times, perhaps not as many times as "free" or "sale" but nonetheless it is quite a challenge to do something new. I thought a lot about the breath as something circular and flowing, and tested many ways of letting the letters do this, as though breathing themselves.

These versions are done with a pointed brush, with little or no retouching. The last one in the sequence was at one point the front runner, shown here with a proposed treatment indicating a gold foil and emboss. We also considered blind emboss on white, but it would have been difficult to market in an airport book store competing with Danielle Steele or Scott Turow from the distance of the boarding gate…..

Breath calligraphy © Iskra Johnson