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The primary tool of a book cover designer is Adobe Illustrator, but sometimes the design for a book starts best by hand.
Notice the yerba mate to the left (in the top image), just above the jar of ink and plumin: a telltale sign of the Argentine book cover designer at work.
A future post will show the full color concept that arose from this preliminary book cover design.
The cool thing about living in a big city is that you don’t need a car, so when going around I take the bus or subway. Usually carrying a notebook with me, sometimes I write some idea, a sudden thought, notes on work & lately… calligraphy!
Some things are meant to last: when I was 19 years old, I got my first real job as an administrative assistant at Pelikan – which is also Rotring importer – here in Buenos Aires.
As employees we had a great deal in discounts to buy merchandise & my desk was right in front of the Rotring technical department, so sometimes I would get goodies just for being there. Still, I didn’t need an excuse to stock myself up with pens, pencils, rapidographs, inks, paints, lettering stencils, etc, that I still have and use today.
Among my memories I knew I had a Rotring Art Pen, that I found again a while ago, washed it with soft detergent & warm water, rinsed, and dried with hair dryer, it works perfectly!
Now you can see me on the bus, lettering away:
I also found that I’m not the only one that loves the Art Pen, and the blog Making a mark has a great post dedicated to it.
*The ornament on the side of this post is from the font Floralia by Manfred Klein.
As a part of my later calligraphic incursion I got THE ENCYCLOPEDIA of CALLIGRAPHY TECHNIQUES
I have to say here that this is one of those cases that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover: it looked kinda like a simple craft’s book, but had really good reviews, so I decided to go for it. I never imagined that it would be so good. Really useful layout, easy to follow instructions, great examples of the different styles & tools.
Most importantly, it clearly shows the ductus, which indicates the movements of the hand to get the precious shape:
I couldn’t decide which tool to try first, which style, whatever the ductus… started to mix & match: inks, brushes, nibs, pencil. From the first round here are the vowels that I’ve drawn:
Later that night, watching TV, I couldn’t stop even while listening to a very inspiring speech:
*The ornament on the side of this post is from the free font Schluss Vignetten by Dieter Steffmann
Have you ever felt some unstoppable desire to do something? I get that once in a while and I let it grow until one day I just can’t do anything but that that I’ve been craving for: it could be to paint, to draw, always something handmade.
Lately, I’ve been feeling the need for handmade stuff (stuff = letters, miscellanea, doodling, etc) to maybe start introducing it into my usual designs, I think that it could produce some interesting results.
So I started a Fileteado Porteño workshop. The maestro fileteador is Héctor Rapisarda and here a couple photos of the class & his beautiful letters on the blackboard.
& some of the letters I’ve done during the class:
If you want to see some more Fileteado Porteño, there’s a flickr group with very interesting pieces.
*The star ornament on the side of this post is from the free font Lucky Charms by Blue Vinyl
