With Burgues, you have a piece of “the most skillful penman the world has ever known,” at your service. One of the wonders of the computer age is the ability to visually conjure up the past, serving both the present and the future. In the end, I hope Burgues Script will serve you well when a flourished word or sentence is required for a design project. Burgues is the Spanish word for Bourgeois. Such blinding talent from over a hundred years ago. When I think of Madarasz producing a flourished calligraphic logotype in a few seconds, and try to reconcile that with the timelines of my or my colleagues’ work in identity and packaging design, the mind reels. I can only imagine what steady nerves and discipline Madarasz must have had to be able to produce fully flourished and sublimely connected words and sentences on a whim. It seems that the extremely high contrast of the forms, coupled with the required flow and connectivity of such lettering, will always be hard work for any visual artist to produce, even with the aide of a powerful machine. Madarasz’s method of penmanship was fascinating and challenging to translate into the strict, mathematically oriented language of the computer. The past holds as many surprises as the future.
Surprisingly, and fortunately for me, this did not happen. I also thought that, like with most other scripts, the process would regularize itself after a while and be reduced to a mechanical habit. After working with digital scripts for so long, at one point I thought that Burgues Script would become a bit of a chore to complete. All of this has been tied together with OpenType and tested thoroughly within today’s standard design and desktop publishing software. To this end, many ligatures and swashes were made, as well as full flourished sets of letters for use at the beginnings or endings of words and sentences. I did have to change many of the letters in order to be able to produce digital calligraphy that can flow flexibly and offered the user a variety of options, while maintaining its attractive appearance.
These two references were the cornerstone for the concept I was trying to work with. Jones’s Lessons in Advanced Engraver’s Script Penmanship by L. The two main sources for Burgues were the calligraphy examples shown in Zaner Bloser’s The Secret of the Skill of Madarasz: His Philosophy and Penmanship Masterpieces, and C. I hope you, visual poet, find my persistence justified in this case. And occasionally, the poet gives in to the persistence. Once in a while, the assistant persists on what the subject of the poem will be. My work consists of letters drawn to fit together, that become an element of someone’s visual poetry. If I was an actual poet, my words would be about things I desire but cannot attain, objects of utter beauty that make me wallow in humility, or people of enormous talent who look down at me from the clouds of genius. His talent has caused some people to call him “the most skillful penman the world has ever known.” I use the word ‘ode’ in a colloquially ambitious manner. He previously worked at OpenTable, IDEO and Adaptive Path.Burgues Script is an ode to the late 19th century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz, whose legendary pen has inspired schools of penmanship for over 100 years. He is currently a Product Design Manager at Facebook and teaches Interaction Design at CCA. SCĬhristian Palino is a designer and educator living in San Francisco. I imagine Alejandro nearly fainted, and rightly so. Carter’s attention was drawn to the typeface by art director Nancy Harris Rouemy who had been using it in the Style section of the magazine for months. At TypeCon2007, Alejandro Paul was approached by living legend Matthew Carter who handed him a copy of the most recent New York Times Magazine and pointed to the pages adorned with Burgues Script. The expansive set of flourishes and sweeping, high contrast swashes carry the tension of the pen and aren’t afraid to intermingle and mix it up.Įditor’s note: Here’s a little story of a young type designer coming into his own. This is not the case with Burgues Script. The sheer challenge of regularizing such penmanship usually translates into digital typefaces that either lack rhythm or become so overworked that they lose their vivacity.
Creating a typeface that aspires to the blinding craftsmanship and pure ornamental beauty of Louis Madarasz is indeed a steep order to fill.Īle pulls it off beautifully.