Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to 2026 and to series five of the Life of Letters podcast. We are beyond excited that Speedball Arts, who have supported us for the last two series, have joined us on this journey for the whole of 2026, all three series, and they will be sponsoring us for and we couldn't be happier. So thank you very much, Speedball Arts.
It's year two for the Life of Letters and again, thank you so much for being here. We are evolving, always trying to evolve and thrilled that so many people are discovering the podcast. I mention evolving as that is a very permanent thread for series five.
So, Laura, you've had some incredible conversations this series. Can you give us a taster of what's to come?
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Yeah, some excellent guests, really interesting conversations. I'm really excited to get these episodes out. So Martina Floor is going to kick us off and if you don't know Martina, I think many of you will. She is an incredible lettering artist, but also teacher of the DNA of letters. So really taking lettering into the digital realms and just a real icon of that sort of industry and area. So really excited to share that conversation with you. Devon from Learn. Greg Shorthand is another kind of pioneer. Very, very quiet one, but a wonderful energy bringing through the shorthand style of writing. If you've never heard of shorthand, it is a really interesting area of looking at letters which aren't really letters, they're kind of the sounds of letters and using lines and mark making to create a much faster, much more functional way of writing and capturing speech, almost. So hearing how that's evolved and if people even still use it, so something that would have been used many, many years ago, but he's really bringing this back and teaching lots of people about how to get into shorthand.
Kate and Jonathan from Starch Green Studios, so wonderful friends of mine, but also incredible designers of letters. They've worked with brands over several years, I mean, many, many years. And so they've got an incredible history and connection to how design has changed and evolved over lots of different styles and also processes. So they really talk about how they use letters in design, but also how design has changed over the years, which is really interesting. Toshi Amaguri is a fascinating designer who has basically redesigned the Corporation of London font, which uses a particular style on all sorts of London street signs. I almost don't want to give too much away, it's so exciting. But this real kind of evolution of where London street signs were first designed and what, what font was used and how that was created to his interpretation of it and what he's done with it to bring it into a more modern, more contemporary space. Angenie's Rules. What an absolute gem. A wonderful, wonderful lady who runs the Graceful Pen Studio. And she talks to me all about how she uses calligraphy to connect with communities within her faith and her church and what she does to kind of support people who are bereaved and, yeah, experiencing loss. Lots of elements of faith, whether it's being created for the church or faith in her calligraphy, which I think is a beautiful kind of synergy that she talks to me about, which is lovely. And then Chris Campe, All Things Letters is her handle, but also she is All Things Letters. She's written several books now, but also, like, I couldn't even count, wouldn't even be able to tell you. So many alphabets, incredible alphabets. And it's the inspiring kind of story of how she got into letters, but also how she creates and recreates new styles of letters and lots of different alphabets that you can explore in the episode. It's really exciting. Richard Manning is our next guest and he talks about the origins of words. So actually how we spell words and obviously the, the never ending confusion that is the English language and how lots of different influences all over the world, but also throughout history and throughout the evolution of language have tweaked and changed kind of the spellings of words and why we use this here and why we use that there, and the secrets of our kind of English language. So the etymology and how we actually spell words. So using letters in our language and why they are the way they are. So fascinating conversation with him. And also ending the series is Carlo, who is again, another incredible icon of calligraphy in the industry. Many people will know her as Carlo makes art. And she also tattoos calligraphy onto people, which utterly blows my mind. I mean, I struggle putting pen to paper, let alone actually permanently drawing on someone. It's another.
It's another level. But yeah, an incredible conversation with her about her world and how she got into that and how she creates this. These scripts, these quite traditional scripts, scripts on people.
So, yeah, a whirlwind of conversations, incredible episodes, wonderful guests, and I can't wait to get this out.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's just incredible. And I think over the, this will be series five. So over the five series of doing a life of letters, the diversity of people that we've spoken to, it's just incredible that this art form, it just travels across so many different kind of artistries. And areas and it's just. Yeah, gets me every time. I'm so excited. And it sounds like this is going to be our best series yet.
So yes, it will be eight episodes this series and we'll be kicking off 7th of March.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: That's right, 7th of March. Yes. And if you've heard any of the other episodes before, please please listen and review and leave a comment. I know all the platforms are different, so wherever you listen to them and we're now sharing them on YouTube as well, there's little video clips on there, but you can subscribe on that channel. But also Spotify, Apple and all the usual podcast platforms. Some you can leave a comment on the actual episode, some you can sort of rate the whole podcast. So all of that means that more people then can discover the podcast. So there's a clever little algorithm that will help spread the word and keep the life of letters reaching more ears.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's so important. So we're, we're really grateful for all of your wonderful feedback and yeah, we look forward to you joining us on series five.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah, Series five. Woohoo.
