So, words starting with the letters from A to O has been written, and voting is open all summer. We want to thank you all, who have come  to visit us, and voted, or in other ways encouraged us in our mission to make some more space for letters in our lives.

At this very moment, top 10 looks like this (of course, this might be changed, as you vote):

1. Flow by Grafi, 62 votes
2. Kickass by Grafi, 44 votes
3. Kickass by Dawnland, 43 votes
4. Et by Grafi, 42 votes
5-6. Gift by Grafi, 41 votes
Gift by Dawnland, 41 votes (tie!)
7. Hurrah by Dawnland, 39 votes
8-10. Joy by Dawland, 38 votes
Illuminate by Dawnland, 38 votes
Illuminate by Grafi, 38 votes

On the other hand, the words meander, night, and of, haven’t been out as long as the first words, so they may rise on the list. What do we know?

We are now on a summer vacation, resting, but also trimming some letters and fixing some parts to arrive in the end of August. There will be some brand new printed products and of course an array of battles, from P to Z. In September, we will open for a few open battles, and we are happy to inform you that we have a few names on our list of contributors. There are both letterers and calligraphers, and we will try to make a feature article on every new contestant. Please, drop us a line by email, if you would like to join! That would be great.

There will be no battling, but some infrequent production pictures or other stuff posted here during the summer. Hoping to see you around. And have a great summer – embark on some of those less travelled paths for adventure and new inspiration … We will.

Pictures from drawing, where you can see the pencil, inking, and the paper texture – it makes you want to draw, doesn’t it? Daniel Viberg shared some of the photos from his process of making ‘of’.

I really do like that little … what is it? … with the hat and the big smile. Maybe Dawnland can tell us what it is, I’d like a name for it. I also noticed that it grew happier as the work proceeded.

The pictures from the process of creation speak for themselves, don’t they? I present to you: Of, as made by Magdalena Lindelöw.

The word in the 15th battle is ‘of’.

It will be the last word of this season, before our summer break. I chose ‘of’ because it is a short and very useful word, but still it hasn’t got a sign of its own, the way & and @ has. It doesn’t even have its own ligature, yet, at least not as far as I know.

The free online dictionary shows at least eleven different uses of ‘of’. It’s expressing direction and separation, origin and agency. It’s expressing composition or substance, as in what something is made of, or the matter of which we speak. It has a partitive effect – as in “many of the letters in the alphabet are beautiful”. It expresses possession, and objective genitive: the words of Letraspace; the work of our hands. It expresses qualities and characteristics, like “a word of importance”, or “a nerd, nimble of mind”. Finally, it expresses a point in time, or a duration of time, as can be seen in the battles of these last fifteen weeks.

Come by tomorrow and vote for your favourite ‘of”!

/Linda of Letraspace

The word in the 14th battle is Night.

Night is the time of day that I enjoy the most. The word has been used for a long time, pronounced and spelled with an apparent kinship between languages: From Middle English night, nyght, niȝt, naht, from Old English niht, neht, nyht, neaht, næht (“night”), from Proto-Germanic nahts (“night”), from Proto-Indo-European nókʷts (“night”). Also compare with the Scots nicht, neicht (“night”), West Frisian nacht (“night”), Dutch nacht (“night”), Low German Nacht (“night”), German Nacht (“night”), Danish nat (“night”), Swedish natt (“night”), Icelandic nótt (“night”), Latin nox (“night”), and Greek νύχτα (núchta, “night”).

I use the words of John Milton (1628-1674):

“What hath night to do with sleep?”

From Paradise Lost.

Or the words of Sarah Williams (1837-1868):

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

From The Old Astronomer.
(See the quote illustrated, with nice lettering, on Pinterest - I like it but I don’t know who made it.)

Battle will be published tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9 AM.

Do you want to learn how to make ambigrams? I asked our lettering artist Dawnland for some ambigrammatical tips and tricks, and these are some of the answers I got.

1. Look at the word. What are the letters? Look for ‘o’s and ‘s’s, they are the best to turn around. Lower-case ‘a’ is not very hard to transform to an upside-down e. ‘A’ and ‘V’, as well as ‘M’ and ‘W,’ are friends in the same way.

2. Figure out the similarities in letterforms and combinations, in the middle, as well as in the beginning or end of the word. Sometimes the trick is to combine the letters and find similarities in the combinations – as ‘ic’ in Licht (third word from top, below) can be changed into an upside down ‘h’.

3. Imagine the form of the word. What does it look like? The form might give you inspiration of how the letters can be combined in new ways, as in the almost impossible ambigram word flow (an earlier battle word of Letraspace), or the word hurrah (also an earlier battle word), where the ‘R’s are turned upside down, loosely held togehter with parade batons.

4. Get inspired by others and draw letters as often as you can find the time.

Words below published with permission from Dawnland.

Check out some more of Dawnland’s work on dribbble.

You can still vote for the word from this week: meander. Go here.

I love this week’s process pictures. Here are several versions of blue meandering streams, by Grafi:

And here are some pictures from the pen of Dawnland, and the black and white meandering stream of his:

By the way, did you notice that our header has been changing in accordance with the weekly words here, recently? It was made by my dear battle contestants, in secret. Last week a heart:

This week a meandering river …

The word in the 13th battle is one of my favourite words: Meander.

A river meanders when it flows in a winding course. The stream erodes its outer banks. Sediment is carried by the flow and will be deposited in the inner curves where the pace of the river is slower. As a result, the river cuts new curves – and moves. It gradually changes its path and shapes the landscape. At times, it even meets itself, or cuts off parts to leave a little part (an oxbow lake) behind. 

Photo: Meander pattern on the valley floor of the river Cuckmere at the Seven Sisters Country Park in southern England.
Photo credit: Marturius, Wikimedia Commons.

The word ‘meander’ originates from the name of a Greek river, Maiandros, which was known for its winding course. In greek art, meanders also came in fashion in form of intricate, decorative ornaments, with almost geometrical patterns.

Not only rivers meander. When used about a person, meander means “to wander aimlessly”. In order to live a creative life, this might be an important piece of advise. There are times in life when everyone needs to meander for a while. Make some of your curves wider, meet yourself and find your own pace.

I think of Henry David Thoreau, From Journal:

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

Straight-cut ditches are good. But sometimes we need to let the brook find its own ways. Let yourself meander, shape the landscape for a while.

If you love handwriting and want to develop your skills, the best thing you can do is practise. Here are some of our sketch and practise pictures from our calligrapher Grafi and our lettering artist Dawnland. Grab a pencil, pen, or a brush, and write some letters, in the name of love!

You can also go vote for our earlier battle words in the battle section.

Dawnland started by writing red on white, and ended up with a white word on a red background. Some of the swirls of the hearts were erased, in the name of simplicity. I am kind of tempted to ask for a whole font made up by hearts, because I know he could do it, but I won’t. There is so much writing ahead of us, and the best way to improve is … writing.

Grafi started last Friday night, writing love letters in the sand (instagram link). Then she used the broad pen with red ink, and then a very thin Chinese brush. Suddenly she felt like writing the Chinese sign for love – which is the same in Japanese, and then everything started to fall into place. The word ‘love’ should be written in broad strokes with black ink, the letters were Japanese inspired. And the love sign found its place instead of the ‘o’.

The word for the 12th battle is Love!

As you might have seen (if you read Swedish), we are now officially known as word nerds, and our reason for doing all this is our love of letters. Love of writing, love of making shapes and lines and dots. With pens, or pencils, or brushes, or chalk, or … well, just about anything that makes a nice mark.

What is love? According to Wiktionary, it is an intense feeling of affection and care for someone, a deep or abiding liking for something. The word can also be used as a friendly address: “Hello, love, how can I help you?”

The origin is found in Germanic words, like the Old High German ‘liubi’ (actually meaning joy), German ‘Liebe’, Old Norse ‘lof’, and German ‘Lob’, which means praise. Old English ‘lufu’ meant love, affection and friendliness. The Germanic words are related to Latin ‘lubet’, or “libet” – pleases, and Sanskrit ‘lubhyati’ – desires.

The sense “no score”, as used in tennis, is found in use as early as 1742, and it comes from the notion of “playing for love”- in other words “playing for nothing”. Nothing but love, joy, affection, and one’s own pleases and desires. ♥

The battle word was kickass, and voting is still on.

Here are some of this week’s production pictures, from both contestants. Klick on the gallery pictures and see them in bigger size. By the way, go here if you would like to see a kickass newspaper article.