Giuseppe Salerno will explore the world of calligraphy to the end
Having been in the creative field for over 14 years, Giuseppe Salerno is an adventurer. Living globally literally (Salerno knows what if feels like waking up in Berlin, Madrid, Valencia, and Seattle, among others), he always stayed true to his craft. Through mixing his calligraphic skills with his type knowledge he has worked for numerous clients across the globe who value his signature art form. Since 2008 Giuseppe Salerno is in charge of Resistenza, the design studio he co-founded with Paco González. Their most distinguished style characteristics are brushy types, calligraphic strokes and originality in typefaces. Giuseppe uses calligraphy as a hand-drawn method for script typefaces. The creation of these one-of-a-kind typefaces add style and passion to their graphic design projects so we decided to ask him anything about him and his joyful typographic adventure.
“The art of writing entered my life very early, I was always fascinated by old manuscripts and the image of a beautiful antique desk, on it, feather and ink. It was just very attractive to me. I had the chance to study Cancelleresca when I was 15 very close to my hometown of Turin, Italy. We were 3 students, learning how to hold a Speedball broad nib pen, understanding how to make the ink flow and struggling with paper and letterforms. It was impressive watching our teacher writing with Italic, I always remember her smooth pen movements.”
“Calligraphy is not an art form until you spend more than 3 to 4 years on it, before that, it’s just experimenting with strokes using different tools. The knowledge of letterforms is fundamental if you want to achieve an advanced skill level.”
“Calligraphy is the mixture of all kinds of art. There is a lot going in on in this art form. There is math, geometry, spacing, expressionism, feelings, rules, composition, paper, dirtiness, mess and order.”
“Nowadays we are living a great Revival of Calligraphy. Social networks are spreading this art, workshops are always overbooked and so many new talented artists are coming up.”
“Calligraphy brings you this feeling of peace and calmness to your everyday life and it works very well for me when I want to escape from my digital routine.”
“It’s fun to experiment with calligraphy tools, building your own pen, trying to do it with wooden sticks, cans, leaves, anything you may think really and you can also play around with a variety of inks.”
Logo for Tala and Vinyl cover in collaboration with Studio Moross
Copperplate, “I like to share my sketches on Instagram”, Ampersand
“My teacher was mastering Copperplate script extremely well, and I was impressed. I was completely fascinated! During that I was going to second hand markets in Turin often (there is one called Balôn which is pretty famous) and I liked to buy old postcards written by normal everyday people. Also, I was very attracted to old stamps, I actually collected them for a while. There was no email back then, so sending postcards and letters to some of my friends in the south of Italy was the best way to practice my calligraphy.”
“I don’t have any special piece of work that I consider my favorite, but I can say that lately my passion is focused on old maps from the 16-17th century which show the development of Europe, the Middle East, Persia, Africa and the Mediterranean growth. Reading all these lands name in Latin fascinates me even more. Cartography contains everything: calligraphy, science & aesthetics. This is what I’m studying right now, after all I do consider myself a traveler. Discovering new places and getting to know new cultures is where I get inspired most. Maps where the use of Cancelleresca is dominant are of maximum splendor. Capital letters are connected by swashes that join the whole word in one beautiful nature-inspired piece.”
“Do you know who Abraham Ortelius is? He’s a kick-ass Flemish cartographer who dedicates his work to designing beautiful and rich calligraphic maps. Sometimes I wonder, if calligraphy and broad nibs are so trendy right now, why isn’t the same happening with sixteenth century ruffs? Should we all wear one and put a selfie on our instagram to make it popular?”
“This map is my favorite piece of art at the moment. Art full of details with a baroque aesthetic drives me wild, it’s beautiful and inspiring.”
Turcici Imperii descriptio by Ortelius Abraham
“Hand made calligraphy and digitized work have a lot in common lately as more graphic designers, tattoo and graffiti artists are getting closer to the roots of the art of writing and this connection happened not ’cause of books, old maps or rich manuscripts; this is happening from the pleasure we get of sharing our knowledge on social networks. We are living a real revival of hand-made calligraphy & lettering art - I’ve been discussing this with other designers as well - and I don’t think it’s just a trend. Hand made things make us feel more in touch with ourselves and that’s a good thing. Lately, many typefaces are focused on transmitting this human touch.”
“Resistenza is focused on creating a catalogue of typefaces based on our calligraphic experiments, adding to our culture of typography including opentype features that help increase the customisation of typographic sets. Doing calligraphy is a surprising process, then other aspects come along like creating balance with the compositions, adjusting and embellishing some letterforms.”
“We have several typefaces based on real calligraphy, for example, one of our bestsellers, Berliner Fraktur was designed in Berlin, during our project Lettering vs Calligraphy with the amazing Martina Flor. And Superb, a new typeface based on real brush pen script, is influenced by lettering shapes from the sixties and seventies, this typeface has a lot more to show when you access its OpenType features, includes negative figures and a full alphabet set with cut out shapes. The possibilities with OpenType features are endless, so we try to make them as original as possible to always be adding something new and different to the mix.”
Super duper Extra K, Martina Flor and Giuseppe Salerno
Berliner Fraktur and Mina
Superb - a new brushy typeface
“After a lot of pointed nib calligraphy practice I was able to digitize all the pieces and to develop Nautica which is the most advanced script that I developed. Lately we’ve been working on the development of two new typefaces, one is Turquoise and the other one is Epica, both a re-broad nib based and the second one born during the Tipobrda Winter Workshop. Also, I’m very focused on Italic hand right now.”
Epica & Turquoise, work in progress. Poster realised at the 27th Tipobrda Workshop
“We will open our shop soon, with some print, letterpress posters and some other type-related products. We just met Archivio Tipografico from Turin and we’re going to collaborate with him on some new posters”.
“Designing typefaces or feeling the need to dedicate yourself into calligraphy, is like running a marathon. You better be very well prepared for anything that comes along.”
Letterpress poster “Venti del Mediterraneo” soon available at resistenza
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