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.
Apr 9, 2013 | Book Covers, Recent Posts
I still like inking with real tools in real time, the kind of tools that will cause you to make completely analog mistakes. Like carefully washing your french curve and missing a waterdrop and then laying it on your paper across, ummmm, water-based ink????? Here is a piece in progress, showing the unvarnished truth of a work in progress. Perfect curves don't happen fast. They are the result of slow meticulous refinement. They may be vectorized at the final stage for flexibility in sizing, but I like to consider each swell and taper with tools that reflect the difficulty of art imitating life. This concept started out as a brush study, but I wanted to take it to another level and see how it would look when refined with my favorite "hand vector" tools. This will get somewhere close to final in another five or ten hours.
While working on a project like this I need white noise or news to keep me focused. Yesterday it was the KUOW pledge drive, interrupted amazingly enough by a lovely news report about The Cursive Club. Sylvia Hughes, identified in an appropriately (?) retro way as "a New Jersey grandmother" noticed that her grandson wasn't learning to write cursive. And she did something about it. Now the club is one of the most popular ones in the school, with sixty eight-yearolds discovering the meditative happiness of paying attention to how your hand moves and how it makes letters and words — without a keyboard.
[Sylvia Hughes] asked Principal Lillian Whitaker why cursive handwriting wasn't part of the curriculum. "It's not that we don't want to. It's just that with all the state mandates, we don't have time," Whitaker says.
Mike Yaple of the New Jersey School Boards Association says the state adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative to provide consistent learning requirements for students across the nation. Common Core has been adopted by nearly every state and the District of Columbia, and the standards don't require cursive.
"Even New Jersey's state standards have said students are expected to write legibly in manuscript or cursive, but there really never was a mandate for cursive to be taught in all schools," Yaple says.
Students are now required to take nine subjects in preparation for a state-issued standardized test this spring. He says many people support teaching cursive handwriting to improve eye-hand coordination and teach students how to understand documents in cursive.
"But when push comes to shove, some parents might want their child to have an edge when it comes to other subjects like technology or speaking a second language," Yaple says. "And that's when you see the push toward fewer hours for cursive."
Hughes says it made the students happy. "When I come to the school now for different programs they have, they come up to me and say, 'Hi, Miss Hughes.' I mean, it really does my heart well," Hughes says.
Alexandra Solomon, 9, says the feeling is mutual. "Ms. Hughes is kind of like my hero, sort of, because without her I wouldn't be able to write cursive and I wouldn't be able to read cursive," Solomon says.
Many of my handwriting projects require writing based on historical styles like the cursive scripts of the original US Constitution or Declaration of Independence. I am imagining a world in which the next generation cannot read even one of this country's founding documents, and needs them reprinted in….Arial. More at a later on sustainable culture and the "green fuel" of slow time.
Title calligraphy of "Our Secret Constitution" by Iskra Design
Mar 14, 2013 | Recent Posts, Signs I Like
I can't wait to see this movie. The above image is not live, so do visit the vimeo page. Here is a description of the movie from the movie trailer page:
"This the official trailer for SIGN PAINTERS a documentary by Faythe Levine & Sam Macon. For information regarding screenings, and other news please visit signpaintermovie.com
About the project…
There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.
In 2010 Directors Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, with Cinematographer Travis Auclair, began documenting these dedicated practitioners, their time-honored methods, and their appreciation for quality and craftsmanship. Sign Painters, the first anecdotal history of the craft, features the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working in cities throughout the United States. The documentary and book profiles sign painters young and old, from the new vanguard working solo to collaborative shops such as San Francisco’s New Bohemia Signs and New York’s Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals.
The book published by Princeton Architectural Press in November 2012 features a foreword by legendary artist (and former sign painter) Ed Ruscha. We encourage you to pick up a copy at your local book shop, or directly from Princeton Architectural Press – goo.gl/aTZLq"
Designer, calligrapher, lettering artist. 