What different lettering styles is John Stevens known for?
John Stevens’ website showcases a diverse range of lettering and Professional Calligraphy services. He is known for his mastery of both historical techniques and modern applications.
The main categories of styles presented include:
- Traditional Calligraphy: This category is based on classic, historical lettering styles, often rooted in Western calligraphic history, such as Roman capitals, Italic, and Blackletter forms. While grounded in history, he evolves these to feel contemporary.
- Brush Calligraphy: This style leverages brushes to create bold, expressive, and fresh letterforms. It emphasizes movement and emotion, drawing inspiration from both Eastern writing traditions and modern commercial advertising.
- Hand Lettering: This refers to bespoke, custom-designed letters created for specific projects like branding, identity, packaging, or book covers. These can be drawn, written, painted, or digital letters and are developed to have a distinct “voice” for each project.
- Illumination: Beyond just the letters themselves, this work incorporates decorative elements like gold leaf, painting, and intricate borders, a style often associated with medieval manuscript books.
- Calligraphy Illustration: This approach takes letters beyond their literal meaning, using calligraphic drawing and layered images of letters to create powerful visual expressions where the lettering itself becomes the image.
- Modern/Contemporary Calligraphy: This emphasizes an individualistic, expressive, and less “old-fashioned” look, aiming to reflect contemporary aesthetics while maintaining the foundational skills of calligraphy.
John Stevens’ portfolio demonstrates versatility across formal, expressive, and illustrative forms of lettering. Email me
(John also teaches these topics)
