The BLAG 08 Digital Companion
Bonus content from the adventures in sign painting in Issue 08 of BLAG (Better Letters Magazine).
As with previous issues, here are scores of photos and links that were left on the cutting room floor during the BLAG 08 edit. The post follows the page order of the magazine, serving as a digital companion to the print publication.
Read on for over 100 bonus images, spanning fairground lettering, ghost signs, sketches, work-in-progress shots, and everything in between.
BLAG 08 ships to new members on the Printer and Blagger plans. Join today to receive this issue wherever you are in the world, and to get a 10% discount on everything in the BLAG shop, including back issues.
Cover / Poster Insert
When I got back to the UK for Christmas there was a large package waiting for me at my in-laws. I don’t get many presents these days, so I held back from opening it until the 25th. And it was more than worth the wait because inside was the original skateboard that Jill Strong lettered for this issue’s special insert and cover.
This is the real thing before it gets installed in a suitable location at home.
Flamboyant BLAG by Jill Strong.
Ye Olde Sign Shoppe
Alex and Philip Rearick Jr are the custodians of the B.S. Rearick archive which contains sketches and ephemera such as business cards and ledgers. The shop also owned a number of special publications — including Strong’s Book of Designs, The Coast Manual, and Atkinson’s Shocards — which were often embellished with Rearick’s own drawings and notes.
1930s business cards.
Sketches and doodles by B.S. Rearick, including experiments with the ‘Squatty Capitals’ from William Hugh Gordon’s Lettering for Commercial Purposes (1918).