What’s Your Type Reading List: Doyald Young, Art of the Letter
Doyald Young is recognized as one of the modern masters of the lettering arts. Since the mid-1950s, Young has designed logotypes, corporate alphabets and typefaces all by hand lettering. Young still begins each job in the same manner he learned from his mentor, Joe Gibbey—with an HB pencil on tracing paper. “Depending on how long the logo is, I usually make a rough sketch about 1½- to 2-inches wide, sometimes smaller,” says Young.“I draw the letters in skeleton form to see how the word looks. Often, I’ll explore different character shapes and proportions and try to make the logo a distinctive shape.”
While drawing letters with a pencil first—rather than constructing them on screen—may seem old school to many young designers, the process allows Young to quickly try many solutions to the design problem. “A rough sketch of a logo takes only a minute or so to do,” he says, although he cautions that in-depth knowledge of different type styles is critical to the process.
In 2009 AIGA awarded Young the prestigious AIGA Medal for “for demonstrating the power of a lifelong love of the craft of calligraphy, type and graphic design, for his contributions as an author and for his dedication as an educator.”
To learn more about him, here a some of the best articles I found online:
STEP: Doyald Young, Master of Dangerous Curves
By Allan Haley
The master lettering artist’s path to prominence leads to Dangerous Curves.
AIGA 2009: Medalist Doyald Young
By Marian Bantjes
How do you get to be one of the greats of graphic design? If Doyald Young is the example, start with a well-rounded education in life, study with the masters, pay homage to your mentors, work hard, work long and, practice, man, practice.
Letter Cult Interview with Doyald Young
If Matthew Carter is the greatest living type designer, and Hermann Zapf the greatest living calligrapher, Young completes the trinity as the greatest living designer of logotypes.
