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.
Feb 7, 2013 | Book Covers, New Work, Recent Posts
Pen calligraphy with a historical feeling for book cover, "The Housemaid's Daughter," title design by Iskra. This style is between typography and handwriting. The brief called for clear legibility with some quirks of imperfection.
Contemporary handwritten script lettering for book cover, "Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend," title design by Iskra. Both books out soon from St. Martins.See my complete book cover portfolio at Iskra Design.
Nov 7, 2012 | New Work, Recent Posts
Pen and ink calligraphic illustration of the election © Iskra Design
Enough with the spotlights on buildings and ice skating rinks as blackboards, this is what the election results look like from the perspective of the dog. An Across-the-Aisle offering from Iskra Design.
Oct 8, 2012 | Book Covers, New Work, Recent Posts
When I was just beginning my career in letterforms I had the great good fortune to study with Bettye Lou Bennett at Haystack, Cannon Beach. She was a teacher of uncommon rigor and caring, and she continually inspired me to reach beyond what I thought were my limits. During a slideshow of contemporary calligraphy she made a comment that has never left my mind. After a long beat in which we regarded an example of calligraphy on the screen she said only, "This piece could have benefitted from some judicial retouching."
Ouf, I thought, scalding! What exactly is judicial retouching? And how can I avoid ever being held up as a similar example? At that point I was simply learning how to hold an edged pen, dip it in ink, and make a simple perfect italic letter in the tradition of Lloyd Reynolds and the long lineage of Arrighi. I had not yet moved into lettering design for reproduction. I knew nothing about typography, and operated on the assumption, common then, that "pure" calligraphy could only be made in one fell swoop and that if you fussed with it afterwards the Lords of the Pen would come down from that clear crystal inkwell in which they lived and smite you.
I went on to realize that lettering for reproduction must inevitably be a dialogue between the aesthetics of fonts and the airy and sometimes reckless dance of the pen. Recently, in organizing archives for a book jackets portfolio, I came across this project for Pocket Books, which illustrates beautifully the path from pure calligraphy to work for reproduction — and calligraphy's connection to typography.
To write the name of Audrey Hepburn is a dream assignment. The title needed to express elegance, divadom, perfection, beauty, and reflect some history of her era by referencing the typefaces of her time. Here is the initial page exploring her name with various brushes and pens:
Calligraphic sketches in pointed brush and edged pen
We went to final art on the second one and the publisher then decided to use only her last name.
This is an unretouched scan of edged pen calligraphy on Crane's Crest.
The calligraphy shows that lovely lyrical "ribbon" that happens when a true edged pen turns in space–but the work would never survive reduction at small size in a catalog, or read from a distance. And if you look closely you see the roughness of the paper. It can be hair-raising to go into a piece like this, that is "pure" and walk that balance between calligraphic beauty and typographic strength. This was done long before bezier curves and Photoshop, and I used French Curves, a three ott rapidograph and photostat paper to ink this final version:
Formal typographic calligraphy
I would have loved to keep the original H, but it was decreed by marketing that it was "hard to read"– three words that may be the least favorite in the English language to a calligrapher's ears. This was before the proliferation of script fonts, and my primary reference was the dreaded "Park Avenue," along with the more respectable "Coronet," "Ariston," "Amazone," and "Bernhard Cursive" from my much-loved and dog-eared Ryder Display book.
Audrey, wherever you are, I hope you like this. It was lovely to be you, and to wear your earrings for a day.
Oct 2, 2012 | New Work, Recent Posts |
I think the kind of illustration I like to do most is simple iconic ink imagery. One of my favorite projects of this kind was a set of illustrations for the annual report for a software company. They wanted something very different and expressive that would play against the stereotype of what a software company is supposed to be. The illustrations were printed full bleed on one side of the page, and typogaphy, printed on vellum, followed. When the pages turned it created a lovely transparent effect. This kind of work looks very simple when it is seen in print–but like a perfect letter in a font, each image goes through many refinements before it meets the criteria of the perfect blend of realism, abstraction, and iconic presence.
Iconic ink illustrations for TCDI corporation, ©Iskra Johnson
Designer, calligrapher, lettering artist. 