parabolic jack and cathy

 the bottom envelope is the one i sent to cathy that i thought was ugh-mo and was not going to put it on the blog. she said she liked the organic feel of it. so i thought i would try some other variations. i already posted one i sent to cathy and another one for elizabeth. i called it pueblo lettering, because it reminded me of pueblos. then jack left a comment/question asking about pueblo lettering and i googled pueblos. they were actually very square and the only dome shapes they had were in some little structures that were sitting in front of the houses. they look like ovens to me. maybe finn will do some research for us and let us know. i just looked at the pictures. i think finn and i had some conversation about cactus. and i thought i had some cactus stamps, but could not find them. then, i saw the pueblo pot and realized that those shapes were the ones that made me think of pueblo for that lettering style.

when i did the pueblo envelope for jack -which is the middle one- i didn't take time to look at the cathy envelope to recall exactly what those letters looked like and the result on that middle jack was clunky, so i went back and looked at the cathy envelope and voila, it hit me, those are parabolas. so i googled parabola designs and there were a ton of them that popped up, including the arch in st louis- very fitting for mr. jack who lives on the peacock farm in missouri.
so - there you have it - my parabolic alphabet - which is the top envelope.  you have to built it letter by letter. you can't just figure out 26 shapes and have them look good together. i have to start doing some pod casts or ted talks to really explain some of these lettering ideas. but, a big shout out and thank you to cathy for liking something that i just tossed off and then tossed out. if she had not said something nice about this toady little envelope, i never would have gotten to that top one...and i have only just begun to develop the full concept...although, to be perfectly honest, i am on a serious peacock binge - which i am bumping ahead of the regularly scheduled envelopes. i hope mr. jack can get some sleep. i pretty much outdid my self ...and it's all from his inspirational bio.