But a long time before his career took off, Taïeb took to the streets. In fact, it was actually his love for graffiti that would eventually blossom into a career in typography. “I started in graffiti and moved into typography, so I brought that street style and energy into my work in a way that seems to connect with people,” he explained in an interview with Creative Bloq.

“But of course, I know that I’m not the only person who’s followed this path. So I think one thing that helps make my work distinctive and different is that it’s underpinned by a proper understanding of the fundamental principles of typography, which I taught myself.”

“My parents were very unhappy with me doing graffiti originally,” says Taïeb, “so every day I feel blessed that I can work as a designer and keep creating cool new things.” After transitioning from graffiti to graphic design he now works exclusively on typography projects, making anything from murals and posters to installations.

If you’re a typography fan, you’d want to take a closer look.

The post This Typography Artist Works with the Best of the Best appeared first on TettyBetty.

According to Black, his passion for both design and typography sparked early on, when he was a young boy obsessed with soccer. “I was so fascinated with the design around the beautiful game such as colorful football shirts, team badges, football boots, and TV commercials and programs,” he recalled in an interview with Talenthouse. “This all contributed to my curiosity in design and made me wonder how things like that were made.”

His strengths lie in his ability to cross disciplines without restricting himself to one exclusive style. This versatility has also offered him the opportunity to work on a varied mix of collaborations with local and international clients of all business backgrounds. His more personal work has equally been successful, exhibited in cities like London, Barcelona, Australia, and Dubai.

His pieces begin with some sketching, in which he explores different directions. “Once I find the best direction, I begin the lettering stage by drawing each letterform,” he notes. “This is an iterative process that includes several stages of refinement by illustrating, erasing, tracing, rinse and repeat. Once I’ve taken the concept as far as I can by hand, I scan the image and begin the digitization process.”

See some of the finished results in the gallery below.

The post Making a Statement: The Typography Art of Craig Black appeared first on TettyBetty.

And with some of his canvases as big as whole buildings, his message is heard loud and clear. Born in Durango, México and currently based in Brooklyn, Gonzalez took to calligraphy at a young age, without even realizing he could write for a living.

“I was lucky in Mexico that this was taught to us, starting in elementary school,” he relayed in an interview with We Heart. “I never thought it was a profession, so I just did it because I enjoyed it. I was also exposed to lettering through my grandfather — after seeing photos of his work in the 1940s and ’50s.”

Having later studied graphic design, sharpened his technical skills and gave him the opportunity to go to school for typeface design and attend workshops. “Some of the tools I use to create come back to graffiti and how it has influenced me over the years,” he notes. “I also like to experiment with the combination of digital and analog; handmade and contemporary.”

With clients as huge as Apple, Nike, Mercedes Benz, and Google, his experimentation proved fruitful. Take a look at some of his more eye-popping typography work in the gallery below.

The post Ricardo Gonzalez Chooses His Words Carefully appeared first on TettyBetty.

“As a kid, I was into hip hop culture,” he relayed in a candid interview with Art Radar. “Graffiti was the natural medium for me to express myself in an artistic way. It became more and more a case of [me finding my] identity and reconnecting with my Arabic roots.”

A mixture of graffiti art and Arabic calligraphy, his artwork can be found all across the globe, anywhere from the façade of L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the favelas of Rio di Janeiro to the DMZ in between North and South Korea and the heart of Cairo’s garbage collectors neighborhood.

Born in 1981 in Paris to Tunisian parents, he utilizes Arabic calligraphy as a way to build a bridge between his French and Tunisian backgrounds. “I mix graffiti, which is a ‘western’ medium (although I don’t like to use this term) and Arabic calligraphy, which is an ancient eastern way of expression,” he says. “I think that’s the power of calligraphy and art in general. [They] bring two worlds together and link them. That’s why I feel that my work speaks for me.”

Follow his thought-provoking work on Instagram.

The post EL Seed’s Calligraphy Art Promotes a Message of Peace appeared first on TettyBetty.

“Fortunately the result came out very well. I thought why not try and experiment a little more by combining the two, so as a fun way to pass the time one afternoon, I randomly started making alphabets out of paper.”

It didn’t take long before this random experimentation with paper turned into a full-time career. Now working independently as an illustrator and typographer, Karnik specializes in paper sculpturing and 3D illustration, with her techniques including paper quilling as well as paper cutting.

But it was her paper alphabet which really took the internet by storm. “Before I could finish the entire letter series, I started getting offers from advertising agencies to collaborate with them,” she says. Based in Mumbai, India, her paper creations took her around the world, as she collaborated with agencies in the U.S, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and South Africa.

But you can also follow her progress online.

The post Sabeena Karnik’s Paper Alphabet Took the Internet by Storm appeared first on TettyBetty.

“I feel lucky to have studied as an artist in the streets and later in a college,” he told Acclaim Magazine. “In doing so, I always felt like I had to keep my artistry of the streets and love of letters separate from what I was learning in school. I used to separate what I could create, so, for example, I would tell myself ‘this is for graffiti’, and ‘that is for the galleries’, today I don’t. Now I am combining my love of everything together, which you will begin to see unfold in the years to come.”

Rodriguez categorizes his art into two types of portraiture: Topographical Portraiture and Type Faces. While his Topographical Portraits are made by stylizing a portrait with topographical lines and shapes, reminding of geographic maps, his Type Faces incorporate typography and portraiture.

His unique style of painting took the art world by storm, and his pieces are now shown in public art spaces, museums, companies, and galleries, as well as published in editorial publications. Though best experienced in person, you can also follow his work online through his Instagram page.

The post Samuel Rodriguez’s Street Art Packs a Punch appeared first on TettyBetty.

“There are a few different ways of doing it,” says Mackenzie-Gray. “You can draw a design, print it up on acetate, project it onto the wall, trace it onto wrapping paper, and then use the pounce, (or pounce-wheel), running it over the design perforates the paper, and then use a chalk pad. You put your design on the wall where you want it, bang the chalk pad through, take the paper off and you’ve got a dotted line. A lot of these methods are hundreds of years old; things haven’t changed much at all.”

After graduating with a degree in graphic design at LCC, with a focus on typography, Mackenzie-Gray took a leap of faith and opened his business, Toucan Signs. His intuition seemed to have proved correct. Working both digitally and by hand, his signs can be seen at Honest Burgers and the Museum of London, with his painting surfaces varying to include brick walls, gloss, shop faces, and glass.

But you can also follow his creative thought process on his Instagram page:

The post Commission This Typography Expert to Upgrade Your Storefront appeared first on TettyBetty.

Having come to lettering in 2015, calligraphy came quite naturally to Fitzmaurice and after managing to hone her craft in a relatively short time she now shares her tips and tricks with others online.

A full-time elementary teacher and mother, Fitzmaurice says that lettering has given her life the balance it needed through some busy and tough times. “It is amazing how adding just a few hours of a hobby for yourself can make you a better, all-around more effective person,” she told Surely Simple. “I feel like I am currently the best wife, mom, and teacher I have ever been and I think much of that is allowing myself to take part in an activity that uses my creativity, relaxes me, and brings me constant joy and inspiration.”

Her toolbox includes pointed pens, gouache, Tombow brush pens, and watercolor brushes. “My favorite way to explore new styles is to pick up a pencil or brush pen and just start writing,” she says. “Yes, there are tons of inspiring people on Instagram and it’s ok to find things that you like in others’ work, but the best way to find your own style is to put down the phone, get out the pens, and just practice until you find what you love.”

What are you waiting for? Get a pen and paper!

The post You Don’t Need More Than a Pen and a Paper to Improve Your Lettering Skills appeared first on TettyBetty.

“These fragmented messages activated my imagination to speculate about the day they were freshly painted, who painted them, and the different events that led to their decay,” Kohler Byers shared with Art of Choice. “These century-old letters formed a dynamic contrast with more contemporary letters being painted around the city by its younger occupants.”

As he grew up, these century-old fragmented messages didn’t fade out, but rather engulfed him. And so, he decided to use this as inspiration to jumpstart his art. Wholly self-taught, he learned his craft by reading and picking up wisdom from others. “When I first started getting serious about making artwork, I put a ton of emphasis on making something finished and perfect each time,” he recalled. “This led to occasional successes, but much more frequent periods of frustration and burnout. As time goes on, I’ve learned how to walk away and let time work on a piece for a bit. Instead of tearing up a drawing that wasn’t coming out the way I want, I now roll it up and stick it in a tube. Months later I come back to it and have none of the prior frustration, and it becomes a kind of game to resolve the chaos into something I like.”

Living and working in New York City, he makes both personal and commercial art. Most of his pieces are created with ink and paper, but he also cerates incredible murals – all revolving around letters that sometimes form words and sentences but most always fade out to nothing.

Here are some of our favorite:

The post Jack Kohler Byers’ Typography Art Isn’t Made to Make Sense appeared first on TettyBetty.

“Knowing that life is difficult and that you can’t control things, allows you to make informed, but also really open-ended, choices,” he shared with The Great Discontent. “The phrase ‘things are what you make of them,’ comes up in my work all of the time, because it’s literally my guiding voice; both in my personal and professional life. It’s helped keep me going, but I think it’s also helped keep me safe.”

“People are always saying how vulnerable I am, and I think, Am I? The truth is, a lot of us are really vulnerable. In real-life conversations, or in a 2am tweet. I don’t think I’m any more honest or vulnerable than anyone else,” he adds.

Aside from his day to day work, Kurtz also runs an art and stationery brand, focused on gifts that are fun, weird, sentimental, and often literal. Those are sold in places like Urban Outfitters to MoMA Design Store, proving that the hype is real!

The post Adam J. Kurtz’s Work Is Honest and Accessible appeared first on TettyBetty.

But a long time before his career took off, Taïeb took to the streets. In fact, it was actually his love for graffiti that would eventually blossom into a career in typography. “I started in graffiti and moved into typography, so I brought that street style and energy into my work in a way that seems to connect with people,” he explained in an interview with Creative Bloq.

“But of course, I know that I’m not the only person who’s followed this path. So I think one thing that helps make my work distinctive and different is that it’s underpinned by a proper understanding of the fundamental principles of typography, which I taught myself.”

“My parents were very unhappy with me doing graffiti originally,” says Taïeb, “so every day I feel blessed that I can work as a designer and keep creating cool new things.” After transitioning from graffiti to graphic design he now works exclusively on typography projects, making anything from murals and posters to installations.

If you’re a typography fan, you’d want to take a closer look.

The post This Typography Artist Works with the Best of the Best appeared first on TettyBetty.

According to Black, his passion for both design and typography sparked early on, when he was a young boy obsessed with soccer. “I was so fascinated with the design around the beautiful game such as colorful football shirts, team badges, football boots, and TV commercials and programs,” he recalled in an interview with Talenthouse. “This all contributed to my curiosity in design and made me wonder how things like that were made.”

His strengths lie in his ability to cross disciplines without restricting himself to one exclusive style. This versatility has also offered him the opportunity to work on a varied mix of collaborations with local and international clients of all business backgrounds. His more personal work has equally been successful, exhibited in cities like London, Barcelona, Australia, and Dubai.

His pieces begin with some sketching, in which he explores different directions. “Once I find the best direction, I begin the lettering stage by drawing each letterform,” he notes. “This is an iterative process that includes several stages of refinement by illustrating, erasing, tracing, rinse and repeat. Once I’ve taken the concept as far as I can by hand, I scan the image and begin the digitization process.”

See some of the finished results in the gallery below.

The post Making a Statement: The Typography Art of Craig Black appeared first on TettyBetty.

And with some of his canvases as big as whole buildings, his message is heard loud and clear. Born in Durango, México and currently based in Brooklyn, Gonzalez took to calligraphy at a young age, without even realizing he could write for a living.

“I was lucky in Mexico that this was taught to us, starting in elementary school,” he relayed in an interview with We Heart. “I never thought it was a profession, so I just did it because I enjoyed it. I was also exposed to lettering through my grandfather — after seeing photos of his work in the 1940s and ’50s.”

Having later studied graphic design, sharpened his technical skills and gave him the opportunity to go to school for typeface design and attend workshops. “Some of the tools I use to create come back to graffiti and how it has influenced me over the years,” he notes. “I also like to experiment with the combination of digital and analog; handmade and contemporary.”

With clients as huge as Apple, Nike, Mercedes Benz, and Google, his experimentation proved fruitful. Take a look at some of his more eye-popping typography work in the gallery below.

The post Ricardo Gonzalez Chooses His Words Carefully appeared first on TettyBetty.

“As a kid, I was into hip hop culture,” he relayed in a candid interview with Art Radar. “Graffiti was the natural medium for me to express myself in an artistic way. It became more and more a case of [me finding my] identity and reconnecting with my Arabic roots.”

A mixture of graffiti art and Arabic calligraphy, his artwork can be found all across the globe, anywhere from the façade of L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the favelas of Rio di Janeiro to the DMZ in between North and South Korea and the heart of Cairo’s garbage collectors neighborhood.

Born in 1981 in Paris to Tunisian parents, he utilizes Arabic calligraphy as a way to build a bridge between his French and Tunisian backgrounds. “I mix graffiti, which is a ‘western’ medium (although I don’t like to use this term) and Arabic calligraphy, which is an ancient eastern way of expression,” he says. “I think that’s the power of calligraphy and art in general. [They] bring two worlds together and link them. That’s why I feel that my work speaks for me.”

Follow his thought-provoking work on Instagram.

The post EL Seed’s Calligraphy Art Promotes a Message of Peace appeared first on TettyBetty.

“Fortunately the result came out very well. I thought why not try and experiment a little more by combining the two, so as a fun way to pass the time one afternoon, I randomly started making alphabets out of paper.”

It didn’t take long before this random experimentation with paper turned into a full-time career. Now working independently as an illustrator and typographer, Karnik specializes in paper sculpturing and 3D illustration, with her techniques including paper quilling as well as paper cutting.

But it was her paper alphabet which really took the internet by storm. “Before I could finish the entire letter series, I started getting offers from advertising agencies to collaborate with them,” she says. Based in Mumbai, India, her paper creations took her around the world, as she collaborated with agencies in the U.S, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and South Africa.

But you can also follow her progress online.

The post Sabeena Karnik’s Paper Alphabet Took the Internet by Storm appeared first on TettyBetty.

“I feel lucky to have studied as an artist in the streets and later in a college,” he told Acclaim Magazine. “In doing so, I always felt like I had to keep my artistry of the streets and love of letters separate from what I was learning in school. I used to separate what I could create, so, for example, I would tell myself ‘this is for graffiti’, and ‘that is for the galleries’, today I don’t. Now I am combining my love of everything together, which you will begin to see unfold in the years to come.”

Rodriguez categorizes his art into two types of portraiture: Topographical Portraiture and Type Faces. While his Topographical Portraits are made by stylizing a portrait with topographical lines and shapes, reminding of geographic maps, his Type Faces incorporate typography and portraiture.

His unique style of painting took the art world by storm, and his pieces are now shown in public art spaces, museums, companies, and galleries, as well as published in editorial publications. Though best experienced in person, you can also follow his work online through his Instagram page.

The post Samuel Rodriguez’s Street Art Packs a Punch appeared first on TettyBetty.

“There are a few different ways of doing it,” says Mackenzie-Gray. “You can draw a design, print it up on acetate, project it onto the wall, trace it onto wrapping paper, and then use the pounce, (or pounce-wheel), running it over the design perforates the paper, and then use a chalk pad. You put your design on the wall where you want it, bang the chalk pad through, take the paper off and you’ve got a dotted line. A lot of these methods are hundreds of years old; things haven’t changed much at all.”

After graduating with a degree in graphic design at LCC, with a focus on typography, Mackenzie-Gray took a leap of faith and opened his business, Toucan Signs. His intuition seemed to have proved correct. Working both digitally and by hand, his signs can be seen at Honest Burgers and the Museum of London, with his painting surfaces varying to include brick walls, gloss, shop faces, and glass.

But you can also follow his creative thought process on his Instagram page:

The post Commission This Typography Expert to Upgrade Your Storefront appeared first on TettyBetty.

Having come to lettering in 2015, calligraphy came quite naturally to Fitzmaurice and after managing to hone her craft in a relatively short time she now shares her tips and tricks with others online.

A full-time elementary teacher and mother, Fitzmaurice says that lettering has given her life the balance it needed through some busy and tough times. “It is amazing how adding just a few hours of a hobby for yourself can make you a better, all-around more effective person,” she told Surely Simple. “I feel like I am currently the best wife, mom, and teacher I have ever been and I think much of that is allowing myself to take part in an activity that uses my creativity, relaxes me, and brings me constant joy and inspiration.”

Her toolbox includes pointed pens, gouache, Tombow brush pens, and watercolor brushes. “My favorite way to explore new styles is to pick up a pencil or brush pen and just start writing,” she says. “Yes, there are tons of inspiring people on Instagram and it’s ok to find things that you like in others’ work, but the best way to find your own style is to put down the phone, get out the pens, and just practice until you find what you love.”

What are you waiting for? Get a pen and paper!

The post You Don’t Need More Than a Pen and a Paper to Improve Your Lettering Skills appeared first on TettyBetty.

“These fragmented messages activated my imagination to speculate about the day they were freshly painted, who painted them, and the different events that led to their decay,” Kohler Byers shared with Art of Choice. “These century-old letters formed a dynamic contrast with more contemporary letters being painted around the city by its younger occupants.”

As he grew up, these century-old fragmented messages didn’t fade out, but rather engulfed him. And so, he decided to use this as inspiration to jumpstart his art. Wholly self-taught, he learned his craft by reading and picking up wisdom from others. “When I first started getting serious about making artwork, I put a ton of emphasis on making something finished and perfect each time,” he recalled. “This led to occasional successes, but much more frequent periods of frustration and burnout. As time goes on, I’ve learned how to walk away and let time work on a piece for a bit. Instead of tearing up a drawing that wasn’t coming out the way I want, I now roll it up and stick it in a tube. Months later I come back to it and have none of the prior frustration, and it becomes a kind of game to resolve the chaos into something I like.”

Living and working in New York City, he makes both personal and commercial art. Most of his pieces are created with ink and paper, but he also cerates incredible murals – all revolving around letters that sometimes form words and sentences but most always fade out to nothing.

Here are some of our favorite:

The post Jack Kohler Byers’ Typography Art Isn’t Made to Make Sense appeared first on TettyBetty.

“Knowing that life is difficult and that you can’t control things, allows you to make informed, but also really open-ended, choices,” he shared with The Great Discontent. “The phrase ‘things are what you make of them,’ comes up in my work all of the time, because it’s literally my guiding voice; both in my personal and professional life. It’s helped keep me going, but I think it’s also helped keep me safe.”

“People are always saying how vulnerable I am, and I think, Am I? The truth is, a lot of us are really vulnerable. In real-life conversations, or in a 2am tweet. I don’t think I’m any more honest or vulnerable than anyone else,” he adds.

Aside from his day to day work, Kurtz also runs an art and stationery brand, focused on gifts that are fun, weird, sentimental, and often literal. Those are sold in places like Urban Outfitters to MoMA Design Store, proving that the hype is real!

The post Adam J. Kurtz’s Work Is Honest and Accessible appeared first on TettyBetty.