Letter A
My friend Mitch and I revealed our initial alphabet challenge pieces on Twitter yesterday. It was an exciting moment for me because I would be able to see his thought process versus mine. By being so open with this project, I thought we would both have very different ideas, but we both created prints—me with a linocut and Mitch with an apple. Above is an image detailing my process. After cutting my block, I inked my linoleum and printed by hand with a spoon (notice that buff edge!). It was a bit of a trip down memory lane, because I had forgotten much of the printing process.
I wanted my A to feel like a very fancy drop cap. I added as many curves, flourishes, and small details as I could with linoleum. It was fun to form everything by hand instead of tweaking anchor points in Illustrator. Below is a better photograph of the A. I will post the letter B next week, but you can always search #myletterhalf on Sunday if you don’t want to wait.
From A–Z
Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of designers challenging themselves to create more. Many of these are simple, daily tasks, but others are competitive bouts. Drawing inspiration from several avenues—Typefight being a major one—I decided that I would challenge myself to create one letter of the alphabet a day.
After discussing my idea with my friend, Mitch (and convincing him to take part in my challenge as well), we changed the time limit to three letters a week. However, this ended up being a lot more time consuming than I originally imagined, so we are going to create one letter a week with our reveals to one another on Sundays via Twitter. Maybe after twenty-six weeks, we’ll be so over this project that we hate it, but if not, we will potentially move on to numbers.
All of that being said, I will post each letter here on Monday mornings, so make sure you check back for the letter A.