「Take Your Pleasure Seriously」The way of handwriting

personal
projects
—

I occasionally feel a deep need I can’t help but heed: I start my day and just want to shut it all down, isolate myself, sit down at the drafting table and write out the sentence I’ve had in mind for awhile, the one I’ve never had time to write. That makes me feel better, and I can then move on and face the day.

Finding the time to do something for yourself, with no precise aim, is vitally important in any creative line of work. Over the past few years, as my studio work has intensified, the utterly free, unfettered moments I’ve been able to devote to my own personal work have grown increasingly rare. As soon as I realized that, I understood that I needed to slow down and take the time to rediscover my curiosities. So many ideas are out there—on the streets, in open-air markets, in the signs of cities you haven’t been to yet—and you have to go out and look for them. That’s why I usually accept invitations to participate in events that, for instance, call on me to write across an entire wall; it’s like an automatic trigger to do new research, something that will leave its own mark. The best you can hope for is to find new forms of lettering, or create a fusion between various styles, since writing is, by its very nature, in a continuous state of evolution.

In past centuries, before the advent of printing, most people conceived of the calligrapher as an artisan at the service of the text. Copyists didn’t necessarily need any special skills, they just had to reproduce the texts in such a way that others might read them. Obviously, that was the norm back then; truth be told, up until a few decades ago those same skills were taught in schools—it’s hard to believable now, but people used to learn how the manuscripts on view in museum vitrines were made.

So-called expressive calligraphy and the instruments we still use today, like ruling pens, are known in part thanks to masters like Friedrich Poppl, Werner Schneider, and many others who, in the mid-fifties, laid the foundations of calligraphy as an expressive art form in its own right. They began by moving across the page with fluid, controlled gestures that only appeared quick and casual; their instruments were less precise and more rudimentary than nib pens, but everything was done with a deep knowledge of how letters are made.

Knowing as many historic styles as possible, plus constant training and a dose of curiosity and initiative, can lead to the (hoped-for) moment in which your own style becomes recognizable. The hard work pays off as soon as someone asks, “Did you do that? I thought so!” It can take years, but it’s a long road well worth the haul. It’s also essential to compare your work and keep your skill level in perspective by measuring it against the masters, the admired calligraphers who came before. Any truly personal style invariably shows its maker’s background and influences. It’s easy to think you’re good if those judging your work aren’t familiar with the subject; that can boost your self-esteem, but it doesn’t make for a good calligrapher.

When I approach a new piece, I always realize how little I know and how much
I have yet to learn. There are hundreds of different kinds of paper and ink: what instrument and what style will be best suited to the given text? A combination of motivation, instinct, and knowledge all come together to move the trained hand. Each paper has its own ideal pen, its own ideal ink dilution. On large walls, the challenges multiply: the perception of space is entirely different from the one you have when working on a small page, you have to step back, take measurements, go up and down a ladder (sometimes over and over again), and your whole body aches for days on end. Sometimes you can also just trust your eye, and then you get twice the satisfaction if you manage to keep everything straight and in proportion.

My own laziness with regard to ruling lines led me to train my eye so I can do without it. You can’t know, at first, whether all the words will fit; you have to choose the right brush size, and condense or expand things as necessary. Or you can set up a reference in advance, projecting the layout or tracing the letters in pencil. One thing’s for sure: the more construction underneath it all, the less fresh it will feel. One of my own recent finds was rediscovering the pleasure of making mistakes, of messing up the page or absentmindedly forgetting a letter, and ultimately understanding that there’s nothing wrong with that.

I hate feeling forced to retouch a piece or attempt a perfection that simply isn’t in our nature—that’s a need I aim to free myself from. If you do an illustration many meters wide, no one will notice if you change it a bit from the original sketch. But if your writing is crooked, everyone will notice. So we have to be “artists of emptiness,” as I learned from Tom Kemp in one of his amazing workshops. The nothing is already here, in the emptiness between the letters, and in a text it’s almost more important than the letters themselves: they don’t have to be perfect, but the space between them does have to be harmonious, or at least convincing.

Rudolf Koch’s Gospel books come to mind; their exquisitely beautiful pages are made up of letters that appear distorted and loose when looked at one by one. And yet those dense pages of writing appear lively and harmonious. So the most important thing, again, is the work as a whole.

You also have to consider the content—what to write. Sometimes a text comes to you. A while ago I had to write a wall in Florence, but hadn’t yet decided what. I found a book by George Orwell in a local bookstore, its spine stuck out from all the others on the wall. I took it out and looked at the title: Why I Write. That’s it, I thought. The blurb on the cover spoke of the duplicitous, false nature of political lingo. It was perfect for me at the time, and I decided to write it. Choosing a text is a highly personal act: as a staunch atheist, I’ve always steered clear of sacred texts and biblical quotations, but they’re some of the most common content of calligraphic work, even skillfully executed pieces. It’s hard to avoid falling into cliché or constantly quoting others, but I think it’s important to write something that’s truly yours, that’s a part of you and has been there at key moments in your life. It could be a line taken from a song, maybe by a little-known songwriter—in which case you’d help spread the music as well as your own work.

There is only one way to overcome the fear of the blank page: face it head-on, and let a black mark make its start, certain that it will find its end. Certain, too, that there’s still so much more to learn.

teaching calligraphy:
coming full circle
—

My first real contact with calligraphy was through the Associazione Calligrafica Italiana (ACI, the Italian Calligraphic Association) in 1999. I’d heard about it through Francesca Gandolfi, who was part of its administrative team at the time. The Internet wasn’t yet widespread, so info arrived in a flyer showcasing their activities and course offerings. I was already doing calligraphy as an autodidact, but when I discovered that there were such expert calligraphers—in my hometown, no less—and I took my first course on Italic lettering with Francesca Biasetton, a whole new world opened up for me.

My approach was still more closely tied to graffiti writing and bombing the streets than to the discipline of the nib. Obviously, I felt a huge gap between the two, not least a generational gap. And yet both graffiti writers and calligraphers are driven by the same passion for letterforms, albeit in often diametrically opposed ways. In any case, I wanted to find a connection between these two worlds, and in order to do that I knew I’d have to delve deeply into classic calligraphic styles. So I began taking as many courses as I could, studied historic scripts, and diversified the instruments in my toolkit and the way I deployed them.

I was lucky to have had great teachers, each with their own irreplaceable peculiarities. Giovanni De Faccio is a veritable Renaissance man—a highly genuine, inexhaustible resource: I learned a lot from him about gothic lettering and its expressive potential; his rich, creative workshops were unforgettable, and had an almost timeless atmosphere. Anna Ronchi, one of Italy’s leading calligraphers, writes a chancery that exudes the rigor and incredible lightness with which she moves the pen to create elegant flourishes that are never exaggerated and never feel out of place; her specialty is a deep understanding of letters and traditions, as well as an in-depth, effective teaching method. She’s always on the front lines, defending her idea of calligraphy, and over the past few years has taken on the difficult task of bringing handwriting back into the schools through up-to-date programs. James Clough instilled in me a curiosity for letters found all around the city, letters that fully inhabit their own history; it’s his fault that I often find myself stopping in the middle of the street to photograph an old sign. He’s outrageously likable, and enthusiastically conducts memorable lessons while also dispensing constructive criticism with plainspoken honesty. Thanks to Lucio Passerini I learned to appreciate letterpress, blockprinting, and the value of the good time—both qualitative and quantitative (there’s a reason his studio is called Il Buon Tempo)—it takes to print a book.

The world of calligraphy I came to know consists of many exceptional people—including Ivana Tubaro, Francesco Ascoli, Anna Schettin, Ivano Ziggiotti, Marco Campedelli, and many others—who for years now have made their own contributions to calligraphy and typography with unwavering passion, hard work, and active participation. ACI was founded in 1991: this association played a significant role in bringing high-quality calligraphy—the kind of calligraphy passed on to us from Edward Johnston in the early twentieth century—to Italian graphic design and advertising, starting in Milan and spreading far and wide. Without ACI’s support I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn as much as I did, directly from the masters.

Its founders studied abroad—in England, Belgium, and America—before teaching in Italy. Upon returning they invited calligraphers like Hans Joachim Burgert, Thomas Ingmire, Hassan Massoudy, Klaus Peter Schäffel, Tom Kemp, Ewan Clayton, and others to come and teach as well. Their courses have always been organized by dedicated, self-financed volunteers.The associations that sprung up afterward worked similarly, and made a similarly great contribution to the field. They include the calligraphy groups in Turin led by Piero De Macchi and Massimo Polello, one in Rome run by Monica Dengo, and probably many others I’m not yet personally familiar with. Without their hard work no one in Italy would be talking about calligraphy today without having to start from scratch and explain what it is.

When I was first asked to teach, I wasn’t completely convinced I’d be able to pull it off. I spent a couple months preparing a course on Fraktur, and worried about how it would turn out. Contrary to my fears it went really well, and many other courses followed. The first thing I realized was that, in order to teach, you have to know how to pass on to students the sheer pleasure of practicing calligraphy; it takes major doses of generosity and energy, because at the end of a workshop you feel almost entirely drained. Over time you also develop your own teaching methods, and you have to make an effort not to repeat yourself, instead undertaking different lines of research so as to offer new subjects that reignite people’s interest—and, above all, your own interest.

I’ve always been struck at the diversity of participants in each course: they range from curious amateurs to dedicated graffiti writers, bibliophiles, women nostalgic for the inkwells and knuckle-rapping schoolmarms of their youth, tattoo artists who swear like sailors, and journalists tired of the keyboard who want to take up the pen again. I should also note that my courses are increasingly filled with fairly young people—a lot of students and budding graphic designers. Teaching is definitely a privileged opportunity for learning, too; it gives me the chance to travel and see places I otherwise might never have seen, as well as meet new people and, often, new friends.

Writing, like any other discipline, exists as long as it’s passed on; teaching means giving others the possibility of venturing down the same paths that allowed me to get my own start. It’s like coming full circle. Calligraphy is an art that comes from afar, and has deep roots—especially in Italy. You have to want to know its history and past in order to be able to follow its present (especially in the digital age), and hopefully its long future.

--------------------
This article was originally published in Take Your Pleasure Seriously (2012) by Luca Barcellona.

--------------------

Luca Barcellona is born in 1978. He has his own studio in Milan, where he works as a freelance graphic designer and calligrapher. Letters are the main ingredient of his creations. He teaches calligraphy with the Associazione Calligrafica Italiana and holds workshops and lectures in several cities, as the last one in California and Australia. The means of his work is to make the manual skill of an ancient art as writing and the languages and instruments of the digital era coexist. In 2003 he founded with Rae Martini and Marco Klefisch the collective Rebel Ink, with which he gives life to a live exhibition of calligraphy, writing and illustration. In 2009 he has worked for the National Museum of Zurich, with calligraphist Klaus-Peter Schäffel, to realize the faithful reproduction of a big globe dated back to the 1569, using calligraphy with original materials (quill and natural inks). Among the brands that requested his lettering we can number Carhartt, Nike, Mondadori, Zoo York, Dolce & Gabbana, Sony BMG, Seat, Volvo, Universal, Eni, Mont Blanc, Wall Street Institute. Among his latest collective exhibitions: "Stuck on the City" in Prague, "Don't Forget To Write" at Carhartt Gallery (Germany). As well as taking part to several independent projects his works appeared in many publications. In 2010 he produced his own personal clothing brand "Luca Barcellona Gold Series". He recently published his first monographic book Take Your Pleasure Seriously by Lazy Dog Press, the publishing house which is a member himself. His study into lettering led him to experience from graffiti to classic calligraphy, up to big wallpainting, typography and letterpress printing.
http://www.lucabarcellona.com/

「Take Your Pleasure Seriously」The way of handwriting

letters
from the past
—
I can’t recall the exact moment in which writing went from being a passion to my line of work, but I do know that it wasn’t premeditated. I began working when I was seventeen, and still a student. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in the past, including some very humble ones. My main interest at the time was graffiti, drawing letters all day just like now, even if I did it in a completely instinctive manner. Like many of my peers, I spent hours sketching out what would later see the light—paradoxically, at night—on subway and train cars or in some other corner of the city.

I got by in school, but my strongest memory is of pen and paper, and how intent I was on improving my tag so I could show it to other graffiti writers. I recall choosing my first tag in 1994, based on the letters I liked, without knowing what it meant; first it was “Been,” which later became “Bean” to avoid dealing with the double “e.” There were often no books in my backpack, which I filled instead with cans of spray paint cracked open as soon as school was out, coating diesel trains parked near the station in my hometown on the outskirts of Milan: during class I would prepare the outline, and by 2:30 that afternoon I was out there painting it on the train cars.

Ditto each evening: I always had a marker in my pocket and left marks that to most people looked like little more than small scrawls, while for us writers they grew increasingly complex, and increasingly important, because that was our ID in the subculture we ourselves had created, a micro-society most people ignored. If I were asked to define it now, I could only awkwardly say that we were a bunch of amicable, maladjusted kids who were trying to escape mediocrity by pursuing a somewhat risky pastime. I think this “parallel education” left such a deep mark on me that I decided not to shed it as I grew—it was my real schooling, and I knew I should make something of it.

I found the graphic design that teachers talked about relatively interesting. I remember the transition from analog to digital being a bit traumatic: when I began design school I was fascinated by Pantone, transfer sheets, Rapidographs, and works drawn on Schoeller paper; when I finished, in 1997, all that had been replaced by computers. Had I told anyone I wanted to be a calligrapher, they would certainly have thought I was mad. “There’s no market for that,” they’d have said. All anyone talked about was websites, servers, and Flash, while I was running around with a large black leather-bound sketchbook full of drawings, photos, and sketches of graffiti and a few works of primordial calligraphy. My experiences as a graphic designer came later, and they weren’t very creative. For the most part I did page layouts for design and architecture magazines. A few ad agencies gave me job interviews. I remember an art director who, looking at some of my images, said, “It looks tough. Interesting…” He made a few color photocopies and never called me back.

My job search grew more discouraging by the day: I had learned some graphic design software, but I didn’t want using it to become my full-time job. I decided to give it up, because the repulsion I felt toward the gadgets that had completely wiped out all manual work in the field was too strong for me to pretend nothing was wrong and to try adapting to the change. In 2003 I found work at a music store that was part of a large chain. I stayed there for four years, and after work I began to draw and practice with a nib pen, making works on canvas and experimenting with lettering, mostly in a self-taught way. Then I began receiving strange work requests, everything from commissions spray painting stores to customizing booths, products, and model cars for specialized trade fairs. I also began lettering invitations for some stylists with whom a few of my other calligrapher friends had been working for years; it was a real privilege, they paid me to just write all day, and three or four days’ work paid more than what I earned in a month at the store. It was also an exercise that improved my writing, something I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. Writing names and addresses for eight hours straight can be a kind of “slavery,” as James Clough calls it, but it can be quite useful. I often gave up my vacation days to do that work and other jobs, and when I had no days left I made up absurd excuses to get time off. For a while, some of my close relatives were on the brink of death about once a month (my apologies, everyone!).

I hadn’t yet begun posting works on the web, but a few photos ran in some magazines and I was busy with performances by Rebel Ink, a collective I was part of alongside Rae Martini, Marco Klefisch, and Francesca Gandolfi. We’d begun touring many Italian cities, and later toured abroad as well; the Rebel Ink site was our long-term homepage, but a lot of people also came out to see us in person, and word began to spread. We began performing in 2003 and our last events took place in Prague in 2009, after which we all took different paths. We were well aware of the fact that it wasn’t just some random experience; it had given us real meaning without tying us down to the world of street art, a niche we had never really identified with, and had distanced ourselves from at the very outset. We knew our work with graffiti would come to a turning point, and we were determined to decide where it would go from there.

The idea that someone I didn’t even know might wear something I’d drawn piqued my curiosity. I designed my first “official” T-shirt in 2006 for Gold, a company I still work with, and with whom in 2010 I co-produced an entire line. Then came the graphics for Iuter, a streetwear brand founded by friends that was starting to take off. A lot of the connections that brought these commissions came from people I’d met through hip-hop, a scene I had been part of for several years, and which remains a integral part of my roots.

Meanwhile, the demand for my work kept growing, to the point where I transitioned to working half days in the store, and then one day I up and quit, just like that. I left my safety net so I could continue drawing letters, without knowing exactly what kind of work I’d chosen to do. About a month later I designed my first headline for an advertising campaign. I couldn’t believe it, and I strolled out of the agency light on my feet, singing to myself, almost leaping for joy like a scene in a film. I was definitely afraid of not making it, but then I understood that, even if it went badly, I could always go back and find work somewhere else. In the meantime I intensified my calligraphy studies and began taking evening courses in computer graphics, type design, and printmaking, so that I’d have as many visual languages as possible to apply to my work. I knew I had to do that in order to gain a deeper understanding of the subject, although I also have to admit that it wasn’t easy to continue drawing letters all evening after spending the entire day doing it. I bought and read books on typography with an almost maniacal diligence. Actually, it was outright maniacal. But that was a bit of a passing phase, too…

the calligrapher’s
profession today
—

Up until about some years ago I couldn’t have imagined refusing certain gigs and devoting my time only to the ones that interested me—I considered that a luxury. But soon thereafter I found myself in that very position, having to make hard choices.
First of all, I had to deal with the ethical issues: when your passion becomes your profession, you’re faced with the choice of either working or not working with clients that might not share your same values. Soon, however, you realize that in such cases ethics are really just a matter of personal preference, something you have to sort out for yourself. “Purity” and the need for others’ approval are probably relics of graffiti writing.

I chose to try my hand at commercial work very early on. I thought I’d be able to do it just like so many of my idols had done—Herb Lubalin, Saul Bass, and Milton Glaser—without it detracting at all from the splendor of the final creations. The thing that fascinates me about those designers and many other letterers is the way their logos and brands have become part of popular culture—the well-designed lettering found on everyday products, on supermarket shelves and everywhere else. I walk through stores and I encounter Massimo Vignelli on the bottles of Feudi di San Gregorio wine, Saul Bass on boxes of Kleenex, and even Salvador Dalí in the Chupa Chups lollipop logo.

Up to now I’ve found a happy medium, alternating purely commercial jobs with more personal ones, or ones for causes I openly support. Such manual work definitely takes time, especially since I’ve decided to do it all myself and in keeping with traditional methods. If I’m asked to work on something, I absolutely cannot delegate it to anyone else, so I always try to do everything from the first pencil sketches to the scans and digitization. Each step left to others means giving up a bit of control, and in my case, unfortunately, that also means compromising on quality. I’m fairly resigned to dividing my time between drafting table and computer, trying to answer e-mails on one without letting the ink dry on the other. It should also be said that not every time of day is well-suited to doing calligraphy: your mood, or even just a bit too much espresso, can compromise the quality of your writing, and I’ve found it’s almost always best to leave pen work to the evening, after the phone has stopped ringing.

　
The starting point of a work is fundamental; a good brief can make all the difference. If they tell you “go ahead, we trust your judgment, do something with your own style,” or if their references are confused or conflicting, it means the client doesn’t have clear thoughts and it will be more work than expected. It’s almost always better to deal with small- to medium-sized clients. The bigger the commission, the more people get involved, and then things can get a bit schizophrenic: you might have worked several days on a project that suddenly gets shelved for no apparent reason; you might be asked to make changes or meet insane deadlines that don’t even give you time to see whether your design might be improved upon—either way, you have to pull it off. Clients rarely realize how much time it really takes to work by hand, so you have to be pretty fast in order to meet their deadlines, which are often insane.

I addressed the absurdity of some bad habits that usually increase the demand for designer’s work (and not only the work) in a series of embittered, ironic t-shirts produced by Gold called the Designer Series. I featured phrases like: “Unfortunately, we don’t have a budget for this project,” “Unfortunately, our timeline is really tight,” and “This is a non-profit project, but we guarantee maximum visibility,” accompanied by annoying insects, a mosquito, a fly, a maggot—all phrases we regrettably hear a lot when being asked to work. The shirts were super popular and, paradoxically, one ad agency even asked me if they could print some with their logos as Christmas gifts for their employees. Apparently they were amused by the very phrases they themselves often uttered. But I don’t find it amusing in the least that it’s considered normal for the hard work of graphic designers and photographers to go unpaid, or that they’re constantly bid down and expected to give outrageous discounts, relegating quality to second place. I think the worst kind of commission is when you’re dealing with accounts that reason solely according to market logic.

In certain cases talking about formal qualities and color tones becomes pointless. Especially in advertising, you get the feeling you’re being “bought,” like you’re the mere executor of questionable ideas that you cannot call into question; it can be very frustrating and sometimes alienating, as if you’re just a cog in the machine, tightening the same screw all day on the assembly line. You can design a logotype or a headline for an ad campaign that then becomes the company’s property: you might see it distorted or modified, its letters cut out to assemble other words, and never once are you asked about any of it; naturally, those who see the ad plastered up all around town or in the newspapers have no idea of the back story, they just think you did a mediocre, sub-standard job.

Fortunately, I’ve also met some great art directors, ones with a real eye, culture, and sensibility. Some film directors have asked me to do the titles and credits for their movies, spending hours explaining to me their vision and exactly what they had in mind; that proved their total passion for the project, and when that happens and you reflect on the outcome, you can feel satisfied and even a bit amazed. I really believe in the concept of gratification: using your own capabilities to complete something that makes you feel useful, alive, active, and fully realized. That feeling is amplified through collaborative teamwork, those rare instances when a group works together, each with his/her own role, casting aside ego and vanity in favor of doing the best work possible. Such occasions include: witnessing the premiere of shows like “C’era una volta a Roma” (Once Upon A Time in Rome), after months of work that culminated in a couple hours of music and high suspense, remembering—as the images cross the enormous screen before a vast audience—every single letter drawn by brush at the drafting table on boiling July afternoons; seeing the reproduction of the Saint Gallen Globe finished after years of work in many craftspeople’s hands, each bringing their own experience to the object; the titles projected behind the orchestra at the premiere of Cesare Picco’s concert “La storia di Genji,” (The Tale of Genji) at the Teatro Nuovo in Verona; the opening titles of “Io sono l’amore” (I Am Love) at the cinema. These projects and a few others gave me that indescribable sensation I continually seek, the feeling that pushes me forward on my quest through the fascinating world of letterforms.

In addition to the work, memories of the voyage—the people and places you’ve encountered—stay with you. I don’t, therefore, view of all these things as mere aspects of making a living; rather, they are a fundamental part of life itself.

--------------------

This article was originally published in Take Your Pleasure Seriously (2012) by Luca Barcellona.

--------------------

Luca Barcellona is born in 1978. He has his own studio in Milan, where he works as a freelance graphic designer and calligrapher. Letters are the main ingredient of his creations. He teaches calligraphy with the Associazione Calligrafica Italiana and holds workshops and lectures in several cities, as the last one in California and Australia. The means of his work is to make the manual skill of an ancient art as writing and the languages and instruments of the digital era coexist. In 2003 he founded with Rae Martini and Marco Klefisch the collective Rebel Ink, with which he gives life to a live exhibition of calligraphy, writing and illustration. In 2009 he has worked for the National Museum of Zurich, with calligraphist Klaus-Peter Schäffel, to realize the faithful reproduction of a big globe dated back to the 1569, using calligraphy with original materials (quill and natural inks). Among the brands that requested his lettering we can number Carhartt, Nike, Mondadori, Zoo York, Dolce & Gabbana, Sony BMG, Seat, Volvo, Universal, Eni, Mont Blanc, Wall Street Institute. Among his latest collective exhibitions: "Stuck on the City" in Prague, "Don't Forget To Write" at Carhartt Gallery (Germany). As well as taking part to several independent projects his works appeared in many publications. In 2010 he produced his own personal clothing brand "Luca Barcellona Gold Series". He recently published his first monographic book Take Your Pleasure Seriously by Lazy Dog Press, the publishing house which is a member himself. His study into lettering led him to experience from graffiti to classic calligraphy, up to big wallpainting, typography and letterpress printing.
http://www.lucabarcellona.com/