My first love

I am completely enamored with beautiful typography, but my love for letter forms began before I ever took a course in typography. I mastered calligraphy first, and I developed a great appreciation for the aesthetics of individual letter forms. I also learned, by very traditional means, about point size, leading, kerning and tracking, and page composition – what better way than to construct entire sentences, paragraphs, even pages, all by hand.

I was passionate about my calligraphy classes. I recall a project with a minimum requirement of 70 words and two different calligraphic styles; the assignment I handed in was an 1100-word book with three different styles of lettering. I don't have the book anymore, because it vanished from either my office or classroom sometime last year. :-(

The example below was done by Arthur Baker, an innovative and accomplished master of calligraphy and type design.