If you ever need to animate your logo for video, you have two choices: spend thousands of dollars on a high-tech digital motion graphics that will look fake and dated in five years, or make it yourself for next to nothing out of cardboard, wire, and mud. (Direct link to video)


Here's me and Jeanette behind the scenes during filming.

With a lot of filmmakers looking for practical, in-camera effects, this is the best way to get logo animations grounded in reality.

This analog technique is also a good way for artists using CGI to quickly and cheaply generate reference of real effects little nuances of wind vortices in smoke, cast shadows, etc, which would be hard to imagine in purely digital simulations.

What I plan to do with this re-usable frame is to shoot it in a few different environments, such as in front of a roaring bonfire or in the middle of a fern garden.


Here are some of the real animated logos for inspiration (link to video).

Before leaving the topic of show card writing, let's take a look at some alphabets. These were created by the show card writer William Hugh Gordon for his classic 1918 book Lettering for Commercial Purposes.


Each alphabet takes on the character of the tool that constructed it. These calligraphic letterforms were made with a broad, flat tipped tool held at a 45 degree angle. Such letters have been made by a reed pen, a quill pen, or a steel nib. But in this case he's using a rigger brush held at a 45 degrees.

Gordon classifies such an alphabet under the broad category "text" by which he means the old-style or thick-and-thin letters made through the centuries by normal writing instruments.

By rotating the rigger brush in the fingers, a writer can achieve a constant-width or "gothic" alphabet using single strokes. Note the fully open counters on the "o's," the high and low crossbars on the "F" and "A," and the narrow vertical letters, such as "H" and "N." These eccentricities were popular throughout the teens and '20s.

It takes multiple strokes of the brush to construct blocky letters, but in Gordon's hands, it's fast and even.

With a blunt-tipped brush or one of the Speedball oval nibs, you can get this fun poster style. This look is often associated with commercial graphics of the 1920s, such as that of F.G. Cooper.

Finally, I would like to thank blog readers Rise of the Molecule and John Berkeley for letting me know about the following related videos.


(Direct link to video) Factory tour of the Speedball pen nibs.

..and John told me about this video about the traditional fairground lettering and decoration of Joby Carter.

Related links
Amazon book:The Lettering and Graphic Design of F.G. Cooper (Thanks, Bill P.)
Free book: Lettering for Commercial Purposes, William Hugh Gordon, 1918

Read the whole series:
Show Card Writing, Part 1
Show Card Writing, Part 2 
Show Card Writing, Part 3

Show card writing can be done with pens. In fact the Speedball line of pens was invented for show card work.

If you're not familiar with them, Speedball pen nibs are still being made. They are detachable nibs made with a variety of flat, square, round, and oval tips of various sizes for lettering. They fit into a pen holder and dip into black or colored ink. In high school, I lettered a lot of wedding invitations and menus for print shops, so I practically had these nibs attached to my fingertips.


But most of the professional show card writers of the golden age used rigger brushes. These are long sable brushes with round ferrules. Their tips can be flattened out to make a stroke of even width in the pull direction, and a thin stroke when moved sideways. Used properly, this tool can make most of the letterforms with a single stroke. As far as I'm aware, modern rigger brushes aren't the same as the old show card riggers; most of the modern riggers are intended more for painting thin lines.
In show card work, the letters were not outlined and filled in. That would be too slow. Even a hundred years ago, a writer had to produce a lot of work at very low pay rates. "Quantity first," said William Hugh Gordon (though his quality was the best, too).

A rigger is held between the thumb and first finger in such a way that the brush could be rotated during a stroke. That turn of the brush is necessary to make the "Gothic" and "Block" letterforms shown earlier. You can wrap the ferrule with waxed string to improve the grip. The fingertips should be held far down the ferrule—some held it even closer to the brush tip than the example above.

The brush is pulled toward the writer with a movement of the fingers, as Charles Strong demonstrated above in his book. Strong uses a bridge, but other writers balanced their hand on their last two fingers and did away with the hand rest.


Here's a student setup, from Blair.

The paint was water-based and often prepared from dry pigments by the artist. The best white came by grinding white lead—a potentially toxic practice. The binder was mucilage, a plant glue also used as a wallpaper paste, a paper glue, and a gum for envelopes. You can still get that too, but I haven't experimented with it as a paint binder. You can substitute tube gouache and get good results.


There are many vintage books on the subject, and you can get downloads for free from Google Books and Archive.org. Here are some of the titles and authors I would recommend:

Lettering for Commercial Purposes, William Hugh Gordon, 1918
A Show at Sho' Cards, by Atkinson, 1879
Principles and Practice of Show-Card Writing by Blair, 1922.
Druggists' and Dispensers' Practical Show Card Instructor, by W. A. Thompson, 1909
Effective Show-Cards by August Reupke, 1898.
100 Alphabets for the Show Card Writer, 1909.
Sign & Show Card Writing, Chas. Butterworth, 1899.
Modern Show Card Lettering and Design, by Thompson, 1903.
The Art of Show Card Writing by Charles Strong, 1907.
Instructions on Modern Show Card Writing, by J.G. Bissell, 1913
The Practical Phrases of Show Card Writing, St. Louis, 1922.
Fairchild's Rapid Letterer and Show Card Maker, Sidney Hackes, 1910.
How to Write Show CardsA by DeWild, 1922.
A Textbook on Show-Card Writing, International Correspondence

Tomorrow I'll finish up with a little introduction to some of the alphabets
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Resources on Amazon:
Speedball 10 Pen Nib Assorted Set
Speedball pen holder
Wallpaper mucilage

If you were to walk into any store, pharmacy, or theater lobby 100 years ago, you would be see handmade advertising signs everywhere. These were called "show cards" and they were big business for commercial artists.

Shop window, Waterford, Ireland, 1926

Read the whole series:
Show Card Writing, Part 1
Show Card Writing, Part 2 
Hand-Painted Signs (mostly North African).
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There are several Flickr groups devoted to hand painted signage:
“Hand-Painted Signs of the World.”
“Folk Typography”
“Signpaintr,” dedicated to the lost art of hand-lettering
“Hand-Painted Signs of Cambodia.”

(Direct link to video book review) A lot of you liked the recent post about the sign painter documentary. I had a chance to read the book that goes with it, and it's so gorgeous and full of colorful photos that I had to show it to you in a video. Faythe Levine and Sam Macon assembled the book from the stories and photos that they gathered on their quest across America.

Their goal was to profile more than two dozen sign painters who have kept to their handmade tradition instead of going over to vinyl lettering. The book was published by Princeton Architectural Press, and I love the fact that the book cover and inside headlines are lettered by hand.

Sign Painters book on Amazon.
Sign Painter Blog
Previous GurneyJourney posts on lettering
There's a screening of the documentary at 2:00 on March 30 in Washington, DC, and later in Milwaukee, Vancouver, Minneapolis, and Cincinnati. More info on screenings.

SIGN PAINTERS (OFFICIAL TRAILER) from samuel j macon on Vimeo.
(Direct link to video) Directors Faythe Levine and Sam Macon documented the stories of sign painters who still follow the traditional methods of lettering by hand. Here's the trailer for their documentary "Sign Painters," the first anecdotal history of the craft, featuring the stories of more than two dozen sign painters, young and old, working throughout the United States.

"There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade."

Book related to the project: Sign Painters by Faythe Levine
Documentary website: signpaintermovie.com
Previously on GurneyJourney: "Hand Painted Signs" and "Irish Hand Painted Signs"
Documentary "Up There" about artists who paint murals on buildings (thanks, Marney Morris)
There are several Flickr groups devoted to this subject:
“Hand-Painted Signs of the World.”
“Folk Typography”
“Signpaintr,” dedicated to the lost art of hand-lettering
“Hand-Painted Signs of Cambodia.”

The Making of John Mayer's 'Born & Raised' Artwork from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.
(Link to video on Vimeo)

David A. Smith is an artist from England renowned for his traditional hand-crafted signs, which are etched and gilded on the reverse side of glass.


David recently produced a cover for American singer/songwriter John Mayer's album "Born and Raised" by matching the style of turn-of-the-century trade cards and letterheads.

This behind-the-scenes video captures the many stages of the process. The video is by Danny Cooke, shot on a Canon 7D.
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Previously on GJ: The style of lettering known as engrossing.