

Images © estate of Ross F. George/Hunt Manufacturing.
Continuing my look at the 1941 edition of this lettering how-to booklet, on these pages George takes us back to the beginnings of the Roman alphabet as we know it. By placing each letter on a five-by-five line grid, and also showing the angle he used to work out the thick and thin variations of the strokes on some of the circular sections, he’s made it easy for anyone to reproduce these letters much larger. Simply prepare a much larger grid and sketch out the black areas in each section. It’s a time-honored way of transferring small things to large surfaces reasonably accurately, before computers. Note that, while based on the Trajan Column letters, his forms have softer and more rounded serifs and corners.

The name Triple Stroke says it all in this classy use of round-tipped pen points to create decorative letters with a New Orleans flair to my eye. At the smaller size it’s still easily readable, too.

Here’s a very elaborately decorated open letter style with a Circus feel. It might also look nice on a party invitation. Rather hard to read, so something you would use sparingly.

George calls this Stunt Roman signifying that he considers it a lettering equivalent of showing off or performing for the crowd. The letter forms are very stylish, Art Deco in the extreme. I like it, though again would use it sparingly. There’s a font called University which is clearly based on this.

A patriotic style that works well for these large letters, the thin strokes would disappear at smaller sizes.

These alphabets use the idea of wobble, adding a rough or crude look by making all the strokes uneven in random ways. It’s an idea I used often when lettering comics, though not in these specific styles. “Western Letters” suggests the crudeness of signs in the Old West, I guess, though I’ve never seen anything like it in real Old West imagery.

The final page in this post is full of contrasts. On the left is a stylish condensed Art Deco alphabet that I like, though the strokes are a bit thin. On the right is an experiment in tone and rounded shapes that I find almost unreadable and rather ugly. Well, they can’t all be winners! More next time.