Author Archives → Ruxandra Duru

Pet views

Illustration: a cat’s silhouette in a window

My husband and I live in a fourth floor apartment, with roughly 20 meters separating us from the row of apartment buildings in front of us. During the uneventful days of the confinement—which in Spain meant you could not leave your apartment except for necessary errands—every small thing became an event. Looking at the same scenery day after day one starts noticing details one hadn’t noticed before—the type of plants someone grows, the color of the brick of a certain building, and, the surprising number of pets inhabiting those buildings. Continue reading →

Clumsy lettering with personality

My initial motivation in learning lettering was to be able to create perfect, elaborate, admiration-inducing letters. In 2011 I completed a type design masters at EINA school in Barcelona, which also opened up the world of calligraphy and lettering in all sorts of styles for me. I ended up loving the brush. I wasn’t too good at first but after additional workshops, reference books —Brush Lettering: An Instructional Manual of Western Brush Lettering by Marilyn Reaves was particularly helpful— and hours of after-work practice, I finally tamed it. I even gave a brush lettering class. I felt pretty good about it. Then… I felt stuck. Most of what I was achieving was by the book but somehow felt bland and impersonal.

Brush lettering class example

Reference alphabet I prepared for the brush lettering class I gave at the Spotify offices in Montreal in 2015.

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