At the end of last summer, I attended the very first Letter Luvvers event, put together by Laurence and Borys as a way of bringing together Bristol’s type and lettering communities. At the time of writing, there have now been five of them (I spoke at the fifth), but it was at that very first one when I met Emma Luczyn, who did a talk on her hand lettering work. Her presentation was fantastic, we had a great chat afterwards, and not too long after the event, I figured that Emma would be the perfect person to create something I’d been mulling for a while: a logo.

I had this vague sense of wanting something quite informal and signature-like to contrast with the type on my site, and despite some early sketches I did myself, I soon realised I had nowhere near the skills to turn them into something professional looking. So just before Christmas, I commissioned Emma to come up with something, using the handwritten “thank you” note she’d sent with the copy of her A guide to hand lettering book that I’d bought shortly after her Letter Luvvers talk (which I thoroughly recommend you buy, too). I tried to keep the brief pretty minimal, specifying only that the logo should be stacked, and that although I wanted my middle name in there (since I always use it), it should appear slightly smaller than the others.

Emma sent over a rough sketch and pretty much nailed it on the first try:

Despite my cries of “yay, let’s just vectorise it and go!” Emma very sensibly insisted that we should refine it a little further. So I added a few suggestions — and some very dodgy vectors — via Figma, which she then used to refine the design.

For a while, I was convinced that the descender of the “y” could form the crossbar of the “t”, echoing the way the “E” blends into the “J”. Emma tried it out, but we ultimately decided that it didn’t quite work because of the unnatural, un-brush-like angles that would be required for it to connect. And having the descender of the “y” loop back on itself and sit over the top of the “k” as a swash made for a much better balance overall.

Here’s an animation Emma made of the process in ProCreate:

In the very final stages, there were a few tiny tweaks that Emma continued to make, and then I put it on some new business cards. I’m so pleased with how the cards turned out, with the logo printed on black and then overlaid with a clear foil — which makes it look like spot-UV, but at half the cost.

From the very beginning, we talked about making a different version for smaller sizes — essentially an optical style. However, we figured it would be best to try it out in situ first and tweak from there. So I put it on my site a month or so ago, just to quietly sit with it for a bit, and honestly I’m not sure it needs another size. Emma and I are both really happy with the way it looks. So here you go — here’s the official announcement. I have a logo now.

Of course, as soon as I inserted the logo, I realised I needed to re-jig my nav a bit. And as soon as I’d done that, I’d already started planning an entire site redesign. Sigh. So that’s coming at some point.

Massive thanks to Emma for the wonderful logo, and for being so much fun to work with. You should go and hire her, too!