Hand Rendered Type

In the last project I researched and explored Si Scott whose an illustrator to concentrates on natural elegant swirls whist focusing on type, some of his stuff is absolutely amazing. I envy how much detail he puts in without distracting or disturbing the legibility of the type and also refraining from making the designs feminine. Scott does not just concentrate on typography he also has created logos and some beautiful illustration using the same style throughout but managing to make them all differ from one another. Scott uses small strokes in this example and contrast between thick and thin in the type used creates that dynamic look, instead of the whole design being thin and elegent. The use of wide kerning helps portray that spacious effect used with his large curves and thin strokes, the design can breath.

www.siscottstudio.com

www.mikeperrystudio.com

I furthered my research into hand rendered type i found a couple of books in library - "Hand Job" by Michael Perry and "Handwritten" by Steven Heller & Mirko Ilic.I found hand job quite interesting and just full of different hand rendered types, i found this quit inspiring as it pushed me out of the comfort zone that handwritten had to be in a calligraphy style.  each design had there own stamp on it, the fact that there are some defects made them seem more appealing that someone has bothered
 to do this rather than just type something on the computer and it's done. It made me think that you can have fun with type and really there are no set rules and really should start playing around with type to make it fun and quirky which always catches the viewers attention whether they like it or not. I feel something like this, is what the poem needs to stand out from the others and grab your eye. 

Some designs were similar to Si Scott's technique or using shapes to create a letter like in the example to the left. Or others which for me stood out the most just played around with simple elements in type, block colouring the letters, extending or shortening serifs, stems and ascenders to give a quirky look. The second example to the left was not something I particularly loved but like the idea of giving type texture and depth, that concept of making type 3d and 'sitting' on the page could be another way of reflecting the content of poems, such as the city? All the tall buildings, creating a tall block type would reflect to this well, subconsciously to the reader.

I didn't find much inspiration from the 'handwritten' book but there was one spread where the word 'stitch' was stitched onto the page. (this design was photographed for the book.) I thought of a poem say about sewing or cotton mills this would be a good representation of this without showing any imagery or even that idea of dashes for the type would still give you that connotation of stitch work. For example about the thames you could choose objects such as chains that would be used on boats, or wood, or other boat or river items, river help buoys?