'Tell us about your background. How did you get started and when did you begin specializing in lettering?
The wayback-background begins with two very understanding and supportive non-artsy parents that stocked our house full of every pencil, marker, and paint set imaginable. I grew up knowing I wanted to do something art related for a living but had no idea what graphic design was until my Sophomore year of college. I took an intro course and was hooked. Design was satisfying in a completely different way than fine art—everything was like a puzzle you had to solve and it wasn’t (for the most part) self-expressionistic. As a nineteen-year-old from Nowheresville, Pennsylvania who lived a relatively charmed existence, I didn’t feel like I really had much to “express” yet. Being able to think and execute artwork on the behalf of others—to address their needs rather than my own—was a giant “Eureka!” moment.
I couldn’t get enough of my design courses. I was the kid in class everyone hated because they did five times the work they were assigned. It took until almost the end of my senior year for my classmates to realize that I was working hard because I loved it, not because I was trying to one-up them. I procrastinated from every other class to work on design projects. I was insatiable.
I started lettering for the same reason a lot of people do—I was broke and couldn’t afford good typefaces. I was (and remain) a perfectionist. I would find typefaces that were “close but not perfect” and then end up scrapping them all together to make something new. I noticed quickly that incorporating lettering into my projects elevated them above my classmates’—everything was cohesive and considered. At this point, I didn’t realize that it would become my specialty—that it was something you COULD specialize in—but I knew I loved it.
Louise Fili offered me a job soon after I graduated and while working for her I really honed my lettering skills. I was doing a ton of freelance illustration at night and tried to incorporate lettering whenever possible in small ways. Clients started to notice my lettering and were requesting it specifically when hiring me for illustration work. My portfolio quickly transitioned from “illustration” to “illustrative lettering” and continues to evolve with the more lettering work I get.
You mention how cohesive your work becomes since you’re incorporating your own lettering into your projects. To create that harmony, do you typically start with the lettering portion of a project or does the design dictate the form and structure?
I think it’s important to consider lettering and typography early in a project, but not necessarily make ALL of your decisions about it as the first step (meaning don’t solidly declare you MUST use a certain typeface before you’ve addressed the rest of the design). I work very additively in almost everything I do, making general decisions and then shaping and whittling away until the design feels “right”. When I approach a new project, I first think about the general feeling that I want the piece to have—where it should fall on the “vintage” to “modern” scale; the masculine to feminine scale; the minimalist to highly ornate scale. Thinking about a project as being “a moderately vintage, feminine but not overly ornate” is a much less intimidating starting point, and having a general mood goal helps put clients at ease. It’s my tendency to jump to the lettering and type next, but it really varies project to project'
The full interview can be found here
