John Burns
Lettering Artist
Custom Letterform Design
When asked what I do for a living, I say, “I designed the ‘Ruffles’ brand—not the whole package, just the lettering. I also did ‘Sara Lee’, ‘Baby Ruth’, and ‘Intel Inside.’” That usually leads to a conversation about the fact that within the field of graphic design, I operate in a very narrow niche—custom letterform design. If you think about the packages in a grocery store, how many of them use a typeface for their brand? Very few, right? My job is to create those custom brands. And, no, I don’t get royalties for each bag of Ruffles sold. But thanks for asking.
Professional lettering is similar to illustration, in that I do most of my work for art directors in design firms and advertising ...
Get Robin Williams Design Workshop Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
