Seb Lester - Typography
talk
Seb
began by showing an A to Z in calligraphy.
Seb
was interested in Art and BMX’s as a child, it was the BMX name stickers that
sparked his interest in typography and his first experimentation was to
recreate this. At college Lester became interested in photo-realism and thought
that this would be his vocation, however, Lester stumbled upon ‘The Graphic
Language of Neville Brody’ and became captivated by typeface design. He noticed
a link between one of Brody’s typefaces and the BMX typography.
Ambigrams
read as a different word from another perspective
Lester
began looking at ambigrams, he tried some out Love/fuck, Life/death etc.
Audio
Visual Student Work
Seb
made a video of typographically styled lyrics to a drum and bass track, this
was his first experimentation with animation.
Seb
showed an interest in experimental font families, they were often quite
unusable but Rolling Stone magazine bought one of them.
He
also did quite a lot of work around 3d fantasy style scenes and this was what
got him a job as they were looking to use this sort of work in their marketing.
After
college he got a job designing album covers before getting a job at Mono Type,
this was his first step in to the corporate side of the industry.
Neo
Sans was born, this typeface became the Intel font of choice, Lester also
created a full typeface for Waitrose based on their existing logotype, which
was a mixture of future and gill sans.
Another
big job was for The Daily Telegraph, they wanted to modernize without
alienating their existing customer base, Lester opted for a more robust and
simplified version of the original masthead, which was well received.
Other
clients include British Airways, Barclaycard and H&M where he was required
to make a full C E character set (including all symbols, upper and lower cases
and numbers)
Lester
stated that the key to font design for retail is to be distinctive but not to
over do it, as it must also be highly functional.
Neo
Sans and Neo Tech are fonts designed to be futuristic and modern by Lester,
they have been adopted by many large brands including Specsavers, Washing
powder, The Winter Olympics, Cars, The Labour Party branding. He has also
spotted his typeface next to Angela Merkel, Condoleezza Rice and Arnold
Schwarzenegger, his childhood hero.
When
designing Soho Lester asked himself What would look good on a cool magazine or
brand?
GQ
magazine ended up using this font, as did Angler Magazine, which shows the
versatility of a good font.
Soho
and Soho gothic include over 40,000 characters and are the product of three
years work for Lester, he also created a sans version.
Lester
also produced some video advertising for Soho gothic ‘a new typeface – works at
all sizes’ to promote it’s versatility.
Type
design is an anonymous profession, Lester told us ‘ my work was everywhere but
no one had heard of me’
Lester
began work on some promotional pieces of work featuring his typeface design depicting
the meaning of the words, these pieces feature 3D design, Lester also worked
with illustrative letterforms, which he animated. His idea was to make words emphasize
themselves by the way they look, eg How can you make the word beautiful more
beautiful? He adapted this concept to ‘Brutal’, ‘Faith’, ‘Evil’, ‘Love’,
‘Danger’, ‘Future’, ‘Nature’ & ‘Freedom’. This work is fantasy style,
virtual reality. Lester told us that ‘almost no one liked my 3D illustration
work so I went back to the drawing board looking for a new direction.’
Lester
decided to strip his work back to basics and began creating limited edition
prints of expressive words.
Lester
has spent the past two years immersed in calligraphy, he is a self confessed
addict. He told us that calligraphy, although an ancient art form is relevant
today, there is an appetite for hand rendered design.
Lester
has used Shakespeare quotes in his calligraphy, he is also fond of expletives
in his work.
Lester
has found recent fame through calligraphy when he uploaded a video of him
working on his calligraphy, it has currently had over 800,000 hits in three
weeks. He has also had marriage proposals and a request from a Lady in Africa
for him to design the sign for her sex shop.
Sketchbook, February 2013 from
Seb Lester on
Vimeo.
(There videos of Seb Lester calligraphy on vimeo)
Lester
advised that, as long as you are producing good work, people will find you. He
also stated that design is ‘a lifestyle choice, you don’t really stop thinking
about it’
He
showed us some of his preparatory work for a BMX company design he did for the
‘emer swift’ bike, ‘people like to see drawings’ the drawings documented his
journey through the design, finding out what works and resolving problems.
The
design for the BMX must have been significant for Lester as he told us at the
beginning of the lecture that this was his first type inspiration as a child.
More
recently Lester has completed an illustration job for penguin, the designs were
being signed off by JD Salinger himself, which was intimidating for Lester as
Salinger is known to be a recluse. Lester described this as a culturally
significant project that it was an honour to be asked to do.
Seb
Lester’s talk was inspirational, It was nice to see the journey of a designer
from childhood to success. I love the attention to detail in his typeface
design and I am fascinated by the enormity of designing a 40,000 character set.
I will definitely be taking his words of wisdom on board and applying them to
my work in the future. I am also intrigued by his calligraphy and I will be
taking a look at his tips on getting started in calligraphy on his blog.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Seb Lester"...
