What you can do with lighter fluid when you are young and crazy and in love with the alphabet…

This image comes to me from Philip Kelly, font designer extraordinaire from Heath England. He included these notes:

"1972, 35 seconds exposure at F1.4, Nikon F, 35mm Kodachrome 2, rated 25 ASA
Why I took it: I was working in the type design studio at Letraset, aged 20.Experimenting with photography and liking letters, I did it to light up my life. With no digital cameras then, I had to wait for the slides to be processed before I knew if it would work. It was a surprise that it did. It was an evening in November, and you can just see my "ghost" sitting on the right as I moved a cigarette lighter through the shapes of the letters, which I also had to 'write' backwards. The very slow speed of the film and the low light level combined to give me the time to 'write' the letters."

There is a definite geek factor in font design, but I think this shows that disciplined attention to The Just Shaping of Letters can lead to moments of unexpected transcendence.