DOYALD YOUNG
Lasting Marks
Doyald Young was born in 1926 in Holliday, Texas. His father was a blacksmith who moved to Texas to be involved in the oil drilling boom.
Unexpectedly though, his father was kicked by a mule and sent to the hospital for an entire year of recovery. It was during this year that
Doyald’s stepmother taught
him how to draw, the foundation of which his typography skills rely upon. Young has been drawing letters since
1948.
this book pays homage to
Doyald
young, who is one of the greatest contributors of hand lettering, by rediscovering the influences that set the groundwork for his craftsmanship with script.
Doyald
has continuously taken handwriting to a higher level of execution and thought through his knowledge of where our handwriting and type has come from.
His work has
shown millions how handwriting has become more than a form of communication, but a lasting mark.
DOYALD YOUNG
Lasting Marks
INTRODUCTION
Quickly moving the tip of your H4 pencil, or perhaps a trusty Micron, you glide across a blank page, forming shapes and spaces we recognize as letters. These movements are not accidental, even if they are considered to be informal or automatic, because handwriting is more than scribbles on a surface. Handwriting is a reaction to past forms of writing. It has developed from chiseled square and rustic capitals on 4th century Roman pillars and Charlemagne’s implementation of Caroline Minuscule, to the American reaction of English Copperplate script with their own Spencerian script. These progressions in writing have been adapted to the workplace for transcribing more quickly, efficiently and beautifully. After looking at these shifts in handwriting, paths form and ultimately lead us to our own modern day writing styles and typographic masters. Perhaps your writing is curvy and delicate or oblique and quick. Regardless, these individualities help to add personality to the story of handwriting that has been written thus far. “I am attracted to lettering and typography because in one sense so little has changed. The letters we look at today are the same letters we looked at 500 years ago. And I sort of like the stability, and that goes back to the fact that our dad moved us around all the time, and our whole childhood was in a state of flux.
So I look for stability, and
typography gives me that stability.”
For the purpose of this book, we will be paying homage to one of the greatest contributors of hand lettering, Doyald Young, by rediscovering the influences that set the groundwork for his craftsmanship with script. As Allen Haley noted in Doyald Young’s own book, Logo Types & Letter Forms, “Scripts are among our most ancient communication tools [and] more than any other alphabets, scripts are tied to our daily lives.” Doyald has continuously taken handwriting to a higher level of execution and thought through his knowledge of where our handwriting and type has come from. It is with this understanding that Young’s designs, specifically those involving script, are considered some of the most iconic and timeless examples of American graphic design. While using these classic letterforms, Young has become a professional at communicating emotion, passion and rhythm. His work has shown millions how handwriting has become more than a form of communication, but a lasting mark.
SQUARE, RUSTIC & CURSIVE
SQUARE CAPITALS are the written letterforms inspired by the engraved capitals found on Roman monuments. While removing these letters from stone an engraver would add a serif to finish the main stroke. This process was replicated on parchment by holding the reed pen at approximately
60째.
RUSTIC CAPITALS are just compressed square capitals. Instead of 60째 the pen is held at 30째, which results in less time needed to write. The downside is that it is slightly
harder to read rustic capitals because of their compression.
*letters are arranged as square first and rustic following
Often writing changes with technology. An example of this occured around 150 B.C.E. when parchment became the perferred writing surface over papyrus. Parchment provided a harder exterior as compared to papyrus and was able to be creased without breaking, which helped in the transport and storage of documents. These qualities provided people with the freedom to start writting smaller and more compact with a hard-nibbed reed pen. The handwriting gradually started to change from square capitals to rustic capitals and by the 4th century it was common for daily transactions to be written in a cursive hand. The letterforms became simplified in nature due to the increased speed and force that could be applied on this new surface, and thus began the foundation of lowercase letters.
Square and rustic capitals were normally used for documents of importance, while everyday writing combined these forms to create a cursive hand used in recounting transactions.
CAROLINE & BATARDE
When Charles, the King of Franks (Charlemagne) was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome, he decided to build his empire on the beliefs that learning, being literate and knowing history were deeply important in order to progress. Charlemagne also incidentally deemed that learning should be based upon Christian principles, which encouraged the production of religious illuminated manuscripts. In order to push forward these values Charlemagne issued an edict to standardize all ecclesiastical text. He decided to assign this duty to Alcuin of York who supervised an extensive group of monks in the 8th century to rewrite these texts. Subsequently developed a standard in calligraphy known as Caroline minuscule as well as a system of punctuation and capitalization. MINUSCULE LETTERS are uppercase (capital) while MAJUSCULE LETTERS are lowercase. Not all fonts have both of these options.
Although King Charlemagne brought consistency to European writing, the breakup of this empire encouraged important changes in handwriting on a regional level as certain parts of Europe began to vary from Alcuin’s script. While northern Europe started using ‘textura’, the South preferred a rounder type called ‘rotunda.’ A combination of these two letterforms resulted in what is known as ‘batarde’ in northern France, England and the Low Countries. Batarde still used a broad edge nib to write; but, the counters of the letters became more condensed.
ABOVE LEFT is the comparison between Caroline minuscule (blue) and the modified English Batarde (orange). Letterforms became slightly more slanted as the pace of writing increased.
ABOVE RIGHT is a map describing the reign of Charlemagne's Empire by 814 (shown in blue). The lines illustrate the influence of other regional writing styles
Carolingian Empire. While northern Europe started using ‘textura’, the South preferred a rounder type called ‘rotunda.’ A combination of these two letterforms resulted in what is known as ‘batarde’ in northern France, England and the Low Countries. that emerged after the fall of the
BICKHAM & COPPERPLATE
Script is defined as type imitating handwriting. And because of this resemblance, script was (and still is) widely used for weddings, births, graduations and other formal or personal announcements. Initially as a way to imitate the engraved calligraphy of the time, script became its own distinct lettering subset in the 16th century. This type category continued to become even more concrete with the aid of the English penman George Bickham the Elder (16841758). Bickham published The Universal Penman, one of the most important books of script penmanship to date. Popularizing the English Round Hand script, also known as Copperplate, Bickham’s writing acted as an instructional copybook for creating flourishes and proper techniques of script. Doyald Young refers to George Bickham as being on of his inspirations. Perfect script is referred to as having a 54° slant.
Copperplate script was named after the process of engraving letters into pieces of copper in order to print copybooks for writing practice. However, by engraving the letterforms instead of using a pen nib, the quality of the copy creates an almost unreachable standard. Combining this with an added amount of flourishes, the phrase “copperplate hand” was used to describe calligraphic showiness and skill.
GEORGE BICKHAM the Elder was an English engraver that made his reputation as the best engraver of copybooks in his day (most of which display his own calligraphy). The
Universal Penman was written by Bickham and was meant to instruct students of drawing.
COPYBOOKS consisted of pages of writing models to be copied as practice for better penmanship. English copybooks included round hand script, certain black letter (called “German text”), secretary hands and an “Italian” hand recommended for women because of its delicate curves. However, in the late 1700’s many copybooks eliminated the flourishes for business writing and the focus shifted from calligraphic qualities toward a more legible handwriting that was equally easy to learn.
SPENCERIAN SCRIPT
FINGER MOVEMENT uses mostly the upward and downward stoke of the fingers
COMBINED MOVEMENT merges the Finger and Fore-arm Movements together while sliding the hand across the paper and
FORE-ARM MOVEMENT requires the
moving your fingers
fingers and wrists to be held firm while the arm bending at the elbow moves across the page in the left and right direction
WHOLE ARM MOVEMENT uses the entire arm from the shoulder down, while raising the elbow above the table (this is the movement used for creating large capitals)
During the mid 1850’s to early 1920’s another modification occurred in handwriting that resulted in the creation of Spenserian Script by Platt Rogers Spencer. Developed as an American alternative to Copperplate script for handwriting standards in business, Spencerian Script is based on oval forms versus the round forms of Copperplate. Also, this script has a slant of 52° instead of 54° and utilizes the entire arm, along with three other movements, during the writing process.
Spencer started out as a clerk and a book keeper. But from 1821 to 1824, he studied in law, Latin, English literature and penmanship in Ohio.
One of its famous applications is displayed in the Coca-Cola logo. The recognizable scripted letters were actually suggested by inventor John Pemberton’s bookkeeper, Frank Robinson. Being trained in Spencerian script for business writing, Robinson used his own handwriting for the initial logo developments.
Movement Exercises Finger
Finger Fore-arm
1
2
3 Combined 4
5
Whole Arm 6
7
Our history is written with typography Doyald Young
DOYALD YOUNG Doyald Young was born in 1926 in Holliday, Texas. His father was a blacksmith who moved to Texas to be involved in the great oil boom drilling. Unexpectedly though, his father was kicked by a mule and sent to the hospital for an entire year of recovery. It was during this year that Doyald’s stepmother taught him how to draw, the foundation of which his typography skills rely upon. Young has been drawing letters since 1948. “I am attracted to lettering and typography because in one sense, so little has changed. The letters we look at today are the same letters we looked at
500 years ago. And I sort
of like the stability in that and that goes back to the fact that our dad moved us around all the time, and our whole childhood was in a state of flux.
So I look for stability, and
typography gives me that stability.”
The Young family was moving constantly, making it difficult for Doyald to gain a real sense of stability anywhere. After years of unfulfilling labor, Doyald made the decision to continue his education by enrolling in night classes at Frank Wiggins Trade School in 1948 at the age of twenty-two. In 1953 Doyald took four semesters of lettering by Mortimer Leach at Art Center where Young learned the formal aspects of script. Young then became a professor of lettering and logotype design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (from 1955–1978, followed by 1997–present), teaching with the same copy pages that Leach had used in his own education. In addition to being a dedicated instructor, Doyald Young was also an enthusiastic freelance logo designer and author. He has designed and published three books about his work: Logotypes & Letterforms (1993), Fonts & Logos (1999) and Dangerous Curves (2008). During 1984 he also released his first commercially available font, an elegant script called Young Baroque. One of the traits that make Doyald Young such a remarkable letterer is his love of detail. Young’s devotion is exhibited in his trademark hand-drawn tissue paper comps, sometimes producing fourty to one hundred of these roughs in a few days. Doyald Young passed away February 28, 2011 from complications during heart surgery.
THE ART OF STEEL DIE ENGRAVING This cartouche was designed with the intention of being displayed as the frontispiece for a facilities brochure for an engraver. The cartouche is a direct translation of a
Spencerian cartouche and only uses Young
the letterform extensions to create the frame.
kept the surrounding loops optically even by having the open curves parallel the slope of the words.
YOUNG BAROQUE Released in 1984, Young Baroque surfaced from an assignment in Mortimer Leach’s class asking to design your own capital letter. This alphabet combines the English and American script families by having loops based on both the oval and circle. The letterforms do not divide the shape equally or have small distracting loops and usually have more weight on the downstroke. In addition to the lowercase
Young Baroque, Doyald created twenty-nine
alternate letters to aid in difficult spacing situations.
LE PATIO Using small teardrops at the ends of each loop, this logo utilizes formal script while still referring back to the large ferns that fill the
Le Patio Restaurant.
MADELEINE’S Based on classic luxury restaurants in England, Madeleine’s M monogram is inspired by George Brickham’s M in Universal Penman. Young refined the loops of the letter, and when blind embossed or printed in a muted color,
Madeleine’s becomes
the focal point.
LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA THE MUSIC CENTER This logo was created for a gala event celebrating the premiere of the Los Angeles Music Center. Although the logo has a strong script influence, it is considered italic because the letters do not connect.
Modified by hand from the font Torino
italic, the combination of overlap and readability creates a rhythm of musical letterforms.
“I am attracted to lettering and
typography because in one sense so
little has changed. The letters we look at today are the same letters
500 years ago. And I sort of like the stability, and that we looked at
goes back to the fact that our dad
moved us around all the time, and
our whole childhood was in a state of flux.
So I look for stability, and typography gives me that stability.�