Rewind: Mining the past
Have you ever traced with your finger the v-cut of an ancient inscription?
Or enjoyed the play of light and shadow raking across its surface? Why are we mesmerised by the infinitely varied forms of our alphabet as they/ve moved through nearly three millennia of evolution? They’re a link to the mind and soul of our ‘typographic’ forebears.
I’m a big fan of letters. After twenty-something years at crafting hand lettering and display fonts, I’m moving inexorably in the direction of researching historical lettering-primarily inscriptions, primarily Roman. For the past 3 years I’ve divided myself between my studio in Seattle and my adopted Rome home, researching and assimilating what I find ( I’ve also become a big fan of Italy!). I’m currently structuring a reference archive-Legacy of Letters Digital Photo Archive-to document representative and distinctive examples of historical lettering. I hope to continue developing new historically-inspired display fonts based on this research, although the search itself seems to have me firmly in its grip.
Garrett Boge