Highlights of a lifelong obsession with letterforms
with
Jim Parkinson
My name is Jim Parkinson. I’m a lettering artist, logo designer, font designer and painter. In 1945, when I was a child in Richmond, California, I met my first lettering artist. His name was Abraham Lincoln Paulsen, and he lived across the alley from us. His studio was an extra room in his house and, on many afternoons, I would sit and watch him work. I was enchanted and wanted to be a lettering artist before I even started learning the alphabet. That was seventy years ago.
I have been a professional lettering artist, puzzling over the alphabet for over fifty years, I had no real life plan, I just lurched from job to job. Whoever wanted some lettering. I have had some disappointments and successes. I have also had some very good luck, and, quite by accident, bumped into just the right lettering people at exactly the right times in my life. Today l spend most of my time designing fonts and logos and making paintings.
After all these years, it would be crazy if I didn't have a few stories to tell … wouldn’t it?
The Herb Lubalin Lectures are recorded and made available here and on Vimeo with the generous support of Adobe.