Italic | Calligraphy Retreat

In August 2015, I attended a calligraphy workshop in Saint Antoine l’Abbaye (France) under the tuition of Keith Adams. The course started on a Monday night and finished the following Sunday, spending an average of eight hours a day writing Italic calligraphy.

Italic Calligraphy Retreat Location

I have done many calligraphy courses in the past, and I have to say this one is my favourite: the workshop is located in the south of France, in the middle of the mountains, inside an old Abbey without wifi connection. The food (the cheeses!), the teachers and my classmates are always great and it is a privilege to just be there and focus all my attention and energy on letterforms.

This year I decided to attend both calligraphy workshops, starting with italic. This the amazing location.

Warming up my hand

Refining letterforms

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein quote

Creating a visual texture with Italic calligraphy

Experimenting with different writing tools

Piece dedicated to The Design Kids for their support along this year

Combining Italic majuscules and miniscules

Learning calligraphy with Keith Adams

Run Lola, Run

My final project is called “run” and is an homenage to the move “Run Lola Run” (1998 German film written and directed by Tom Tykwer). I wanted to establish a parallelism between the movie and the meaning of the Latin word curso (run in English) associated with the origins of the italic calligraphy.

The top flourishes represent the loops and running circuits that Lola has to undertake during all movie.

“Cinema that interests me is cinema about openings, unresolved questions and experiments without refusing chaos, chance, destiny or the unexpected” Run Lola Run, directed by Tom Tyker establishes teo core ideas which are chance and time. The main part of the film is divided in three runs. Each run starts from the same situation but develops differently and has a different outcome.