You make a good point. I do a lot of hand lettering for branding (see this Facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30398&id=100000573925612) and my biggest hassle with clients is how they always come to me with stuff they’ve seen somewhere else and ask me if I can match that. When I do something apt and original, they are always measuring it up to some other been-there-done-that idea from Europe or wherever. I have more fonts in my little finger than they have on their hard drive but 90% of the time I have to put that aside or get my work rejected. A lot of the time I have to straight-jacket my lettering into neat blocks with short ascenders and descenders because that is what type usually looks like.

Usually, it’s bad news when a marketing consultant is consulted, not because of what they can bring to the process but because of what they take out of it. They tend to see no further than what has been done before and their input invariably results in a has-been design.

Anyway, it’s all very tiresome and the beach calligraphy is a great release for me.

&rew