Engravers Initials 3

I did this up for the tattoo shop. It appeared in Dan X. Solo’s “Gothic and Old English Alphabets” from Dover Publications. I really don’t get this obsession people have with getting lettering tattooed on themselves in “Old English.” (bbbaaaaahhhh) But customers who browsed through the books at the shop to pick out a lettering style that they liked, often picked this one. But we couldn’t find it anywhere as a digital typeface. Photocopying and cutting and pasting it on a curve got very long in the tooth, very quickly. So I was asked if I could transform it into an actual typeface. 

I don’t really know that much about blackletter (as “Old English” is more correctly called.) I know enough about it that this is probably classified as a Bastarda. But I’m not a calligrapher, so I only have a vague understanding of specifically what era and region this came from. Was this from a 13th century German psalter or an 18th century English display typeface for handbills? I don’t know. I’m also not sure if this would have been done with a pen or a brush, or if it could be done with either one. To be honest I’m pretty ignorant of the whole scribal tradition. Type for me starts with Jenson and Griffo.

I’m also not sure how Mr. Solo compiled this. Did he or an underling actually draw this or was it merely copied from a source with a stat camera? I suspect it’s the latter. It’s totally got that look of something that was done at 12 point and then blown up about 10-fold at least on a stat camera. There are a fair number of inconsistencies in it, the size and colour seems to waver, and the thickness of stems and serifs seem off in places as well. The weirdest thing though was the Z which appears to come from a totally separate typeface altogether. Whether it fell off the paste up board at the printers and they stuck the wrong one back on, or whether the face didn’t have a Z at all and they copied one from another and figured that would do....no idea. I think the idea of this book may have been that it was supposed to inspire budding calligraphers, who would then draw it themselves.

I made an effort to remedy some of the inconsistencies, and I made a completely half assed attempt at a Z. My lack of understanding about the underlying structure and intent of this typeface made it only a very mediocre attempt. Kerned it very nicely. Added a couple of alternates as well. There are swooshes on the left hand side of the V and W, so I added one of each where they were raised up quite a bit to avoid crashing into whatever was on the left of them. Also did them up a version without those little bars. There are still some imperfections in it, but it will most definitely allow the artists at the shop to set this much quicker, on all sorts of tricky curves, with whatever outline they like, etc.