Calligraphy styles! My favorite way to get inspired. I think one of the most fun reasons to work with me is that I offer so many different styles of calligraphy, each with different looks that make you feel a certain way, for so many different occasions. Some seem more like your parent’s version of calligraphy, some seem more like modern art done by brushstroke. But they are all calligraphy, they are all elevated, and they were all developed by my own hand.
Don’t get me wrong—one of my favorite things is getting to pick the style of calligraphy we use to work alongside each client’s specific event and personality! But I think some clients really get a kick out of getting to pick a style for themselves.
Before I started my business officially, I knew what I wanted to call it, and I knew that I was going to name my styles after my girlfriends and important women in my life. I think it’s because as I started to learn calligraphy and kept practicing, the styles started to look remind me of people! Maybe not in their appearance, but in how they moved, in the energy that they seemed to give off, and the styles that I thought my friends would pick when presented with a choice. Once I began to develop more unique styles, I branched into characters in literature and movies.
I thought it would be fun to get the scoop on some of my styles and to get to know their namesake! The first style up, and my most widely used, is Jo.
Jo is the style that is the most natural in my hand. It’s my go-to! She is definitely a modern calligraphy style who looks the most like herself with ink and nib, but she is pretty unisex, with no decoration, no flourish, and yet super modern and smooth.
I do find it hard to keep her completely consistent, since she’s constantly morphing as I learn more and more about calligraphy, and I practice so much. The same goes for all of my styles, really! But I think that is what is so cool about it. It’s like live theatre in that way: never the same performance twice.
When a client comes to me with no particular choice in which style they want to use, I ask to see their invitations and go with a style that reflects everything they have done so far, or that works well with their Save the Dates or Invitations thus far. But if there really isn’t a lean in one direction or another, I go with Jo. She’s me!
Photo by Jacqueline Aleace