Jun 11, 2013 | Current Affairs, Lettering & Design: Essays
With all the brouhaha about the State monitoring our phone calls and emails to find out who we love, whether they love us back, what we ate for breakfast, what time of day we watch for the green eyed Vireo, the immigration status of the gardener (part Swedish, no papers, BTW,) I humbly suggest going postal. Letters, remember those? The stamps are in the drawer over there, with the beautiful pen that fits in your hand just so.
“Love & Letters” © Iskra Design
I have boxes and boxes of letters from calligraphers, none of which I can post here without cropping because they will give away my address and “privacy.” But trust me, everyone of them is a work of extreme art. And in kind, just to keep up and honor those who wrote to me, I spent years writing back with as much grace as possible, with sometimes only a sentence or two in the actual letter, but the envelope taking perhaps a day to perfect and design so that it looked….undesigned and unpracticed (now you know.)
In recent years I regret to say I too have fallen prey to the ease and expediency of email. Yet I still have a few correspondents who keep my love of the letter alive. A true master of the art of the envelope, a man who favors the old fashioned typewriter and scotch tape, is Richey Kehl. These wonderful missives have been living on my kitchen wall above the coffee grinder for quite awhile, and they help me start my day with a sense of gratitude and wonder:
Envelopes by Richey Kehl
My only recent handwritten letter was done as “Jon Stewart,” in his recent publication America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. It was great fun to channel history through one of our leading humorists (those with political correctness sensitivity syndrome, may not want to read further…):
Jon Stewart’s ‘How I spent my summer vacation’ letter
I came back from a trip to New York a few weeks ago inspired by meetings with people I’ve been working with in publishing. In gratitude to the fact that books live, that paper exists, that there is an entire city where people talk too much and wave their hands while doing it, I thought I would get back to the traditional art of the thank you:
“Grazie” Classic Pen Calligraphy © Iskra Design
This is edged pen lettering laid over the textures of New York, captured from one of the 1,700 pictures I took of old buildings in Dumbo, Chelsea and the West Village. The card was printed on thick paper, and I doubt that it has been held up to a bright light to read the secret messages on the other side.
Just think what would happen if we all started writing a letter a day, or three, or even just a post card a day, and bought a stamp (!!). The thousands of at-risk jobs at the Postal Service would remain. The art of stamps would continue. People would have to continue learning to read handwriting. And as we all know, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Unlike the internet servers, or the power grid. And think opaque envelopes. Think such wild hand writing that if they decided that all letters should be read as well as our little emails that they would have to hire 500,000 recent college graduates to decipher the handwriting! Carry on scribes, brides, kings and queens of etiquette, get thee to thy pens and paper and keep the Fourth Amendment strong.
Postcard from the Village © Iskra Design
May 31, 2013 | Experimental Lettering, New Work, Recent Posts
One of favorite drawing tools is the ballpoint pen. Here are two examples of this technique from my sketchbook. "Rosary" is scanned directly and unaltered. "Forgetmenot" has been reversed and colorized.
Illustrated Lettering, "Forgetmenot" © Iskra Johnson
Illustrated Lettering, "Infinity Rosary" © Iskra Johnson
What I love about this technique is its slow meditative quality. And there is no lovelier blue than ballpoint pen ink. I do wish it was archival. If anyone has found a true archival pen please let me know. I have tried all the surrogates, I must have every fine point marker ever made, and they just don't work the same as the ballpoint, with it's little burr of ink and the way it responds to gradual pressure and building up values.
Here's to the inspiration of the garden, where you can find every letter if you look hard enough!
May 19, 2013 | Recent Posts
I walked into my studio today with the intention of a brisk four-hour clean-up, so I could see the desks and the floor. But this required opening drawers to put what was on the floor into an organized place, and then of course I started wondering what was in some of the folders tucked away. Sigh…… Three hours later I can only see about two square feet of cleared space.
But I found this! Some very interesting studies of the technically challenging, always daunting, most graceful and simple letter of the alphabet, the "S." The client was a maker of table settings, and the designer I worked with had made the decision that the tagline would be in this particular font and in one line. From there, I had freedom to experiment with style and the integration of hand lettering and typography:
These were done with a variety of chiseled brushes on textured paper, automatic pens, and a fine point brush. Below is the final, pre vectorizing.
When I studied Asian calligraphy I did many cardboard boxes full of enso's and considered that the most difficult shape of all. But the Western alphabet's "S" is right up there, especially when you want a perfect negative space on either side of the stroke and a controlled gradation of texture. You can't really retouch that kind of stroke, you just have to live with your human limits, or try to exceed them by doing a few thousand variations, each one imperfectly perfect in a new way.
May 13, 2013 | New Work, Recent Posts
For those of you who saw the earlier process on this piece and wondered how it turned out, here it is. The phrase "the butterfly effect" has been in my mind for a long time. How to express it? There are many directions I could have gone, but I chose to show the light and airy flight of the butterfly and also the interconnectednesss of all things through the design of the forms and the contagion of color moving through the shape.
This script was started with a brush, and then finessed with French curves and a pen, with watercolor dropped in digitally. For Spencerian purists this may seem a bit of a scandal, but note the word "modern….." © Iskra Johnson (click image to view larger.)
Apr 22, 2013 | Book Covers, New Work, Recent Posts
I recently received two interesting samples of book covers from art director and designer Jesse Reyes. I love working on diverse projects with wildly different briefs. For Fantasyland I channeled my inner baseball fan into a vintage style that was intended purely as a vehicle for embroidery. For The War for All the Oceans it was a matter of stepping back and nearly vanishing into a style that, while entirely custom, would look like old type or titling from centuries past.
Detail of original lettering and embroidered art: 
Actual Cover, lettering by Iskra Johnson, Design by Jesse Reyes:
(Below) This was not the version used, and I had not seen it before. I love the very dry feeling of this design, as though you found it in the private library of an estate. Title, pen lettering done on rough paper, the rest of the copy is typeset.
Designer, calligrapher, lettering artist. 
