A much overlooked part of teaching calligraphy is the how’s and why’s of placing the letters on a page or a format.

We will go through different stages; thumbnail sketches, paste-ups, moving elements around and adjusting them. And we will discuss more improvised pieces.

We need to consider size, style, weight, asymmetry / symmetry, margins and spacing of elements. Colour, density, transparency and many other factors also come in to play.

The main focus here is on the placement of letters rather than their excecution, but I will do some demonstrating of letters where it is relevant. You will need to have a few lettering styles on your palette in order to use this workshop in practice, but if you’re just in it for the lectures and demos, you’re very welcome whatever level you are at.

I will be showing the work of other calligraphers as well as my own. Book design and typographic design will also be discussed.

The first two classes will take place in the form of lectures and demos, whereas in the third session I will go through submitted work as a group session.

I will comment on submitted work in Slack and give suggestions for improvements.

There will be an extended access to the videos from this workshop – 4 months.