8 April 03
Digital Calligraphy
Yesterday I bought a copy of Digital Calligraphy by George Thomson. It seems very counterintuitive to move away from paper and ink, though he does have a whole section on scanning work that has been made in the traditional way.
I recently got a digitizing tablet at work and have been trying out different brushes in Illustrator and Photoshop. More practice is definitely needed but so far it’s much better than trying to do this with a mouse! Mostly it needs editing, but it’s easy enough to edit.
Fontographer seems to have been the industry standard for turning scanned lettering into type, but according to a post on Typographica, Macromedia is letting it fade away. There do seem to be a couple of alternatives, though, including TypeTool, which I’m eager to try.
There seems to be far more arabic calligraphy available in a digital format than western calligraphy. When I see Shahram Shimi’s gorgeous digital calligraphic landscapes, for instance, I wonder when western calligraphers are going to catch up, but also what has propelled so many calligraphers of arabic in that direction.
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I am the above name and thanks for including a link to my calligraphic artwroks on your website, and the accolades are very encouraging. The above page on my site has now redirected rendering the above link to stray. Should you decide to include some of my work on your page the address is
http://www.pageposter.com/gallery5/mainhall.html
The main page is in the above field where over 800 pieces of original computer generated artworks can be viewed.
Thanks again
Shahram Shimi