Calligraphy

Festival of the Arts
Whimsical lettering I designed for a promotional poster of the annual week-long “Festival of the Arts” at Marymount University. The colour scheme is in spirit with Mardi Gras, and the intertwining ribbons of the lettering hearken back to the Renaissance era. The theme and events of the festival were unknown at the time this project was assigned. The lettering excludes “of the” to allow for more flexibility.
View my Festival of the Arts poster!

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“Saqartvelo” (Republic of “Georgia”)
This decorative lettering combines both English and Kartuli languages—the script reads
“Georgia” in Roman at the top, and “Saqartvelo” in the Mkhedruli script at the bottom.

Sandwiched between the Black and Caspian seas, the Georgians of the Caucasus have long been recognised as being the pioneers of viniculture. My intention here was to have the letterforms resemble the twisting twigs and plump grapes of a Kartvelian vineyard. Spoken and written Georgian is still difficult for me. To see my drafts, click here.

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“Surat al Ikhlas” . . .

. . . in Arabic and in Hebrew. Make sure to read about this piece — it’s an adventure!

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“Leshna, Ar’eta, Shlama” (“Language, Land, Peace”)
From bottom-left to top-right, this piece reads (Neo-Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic): Ar’eta, aretz, ardh, (land); leshna, lishon, lisan (language/tongue); shlama, shalom, salam (peace).
I wouldn’t call this calligraphy or even good design. The purpose of this was to see how the letterforms all all three Semitic languages would interact among one another. I started with acrylic ink on bristol, then scanned to Illustrator to experiment until the letters were snug.
Once I have produced a final piece for this, I want it to convey that all three Semitic languages, with their associated cultures and religions, are all intertwined and related. We all add rich diversity to the same region of the Earth: Mesopotamia (and beyond, hehe). It also helps that the three words I chose to convey the idea of a shared history, all sound alike. 

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SAPARI, Tema Tamima
Read my detailed, original blog post here!

 

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“Mash’Allah” in Hebrew.
Just an experiment! Yes, I am aware that the first א isn’t supposed to be there.

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Saint Nina the Apostle

Three years ago, I designed a ‘booklet’ brochure for Saint Nina’s Georgian Orthodox monastery. I may share a few of the pages here on this blog temporarily. For now, I will share this bit of lettering I did for the brochure (this was on the second to last page). Back then, I was practicing Kartuli more frequently, so the letterforms were a breeze! However, my Illustrator skills were not as savvy in 2013, so you can notice some irregularities in stroke thickness, and inconsistencies in the decorative bits on the ascenders/descenders.

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