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I spent the first eleven years of my life in Brooklyn, New York living a fairly uneventful youth.
Somewhere around the time I was in third grade, a fellow student brought a lettering stencil to school with him. I was fascinated by the ability to trace around the piece of paper with the cut-out alphabet and make fancy letters from it. Soon after, I started to collect almost every Stenso Lettering Guide I could get my hands on...in various sizes and styles of type.
There was a print shop in my neighborhood which also carried some assorted stationery items, and this is where I did most of my shopping. Aside from the stencils, they also carried the decal letters and numbers which were applied by soaking the decals in water to remove them from the backing paper.
The shop's owner also gave me some old type specimen books, and I really became hooked on how the basic twenty-six letters of the alphabet could be designed in so many artistic and unusual ways. My love of typography had been born!
In the latter part of 1963, my parents and I relocated to Florida...so it was goodbye to the old neighborhood and hello to the Sunshine State.
Early on, I had tried to learn how to do hand lettering, using the stencils and other "guides" as the tutorials for my practice. At the same time, I tried to develop a style of cartooning (and am still developing it after all these years).
In junior high school I was sent to the principal's office on many occasions for "doodling in class"...but persistence eventually paid off. I have worked in art-related positions, including a 4-1/2 year stint as a staff artist for a t-shirt silk screen shop; doing my hand lettering and cartooning as well as standard paste-up and layout.
Aside from designing type fonts as a hobby, I have a love for popular music...especially the rock and roll and R&B of the 1950's and 1960's, although you might even catch me listening to such varied styles as country, big band, easy listening, movie and broadway hits or pop instrumental tunes.
I'm also a fan of most things nostalgic: old TV shows and movies, print ads, etc. The time-worn adage is true..."they don't make 'em like they used to!"
Here's hoping you have found my fonts fun and enjoyable. If so, thank you for making them a part of your type collection.
Sincerely,
Jeff Levine
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