Lindsey Bugbee
City of Women Denizen: Lindsey Bugbee
Bona Fides: Calligrapher, blogger, lettering artist, teacher, content creator. Her calligraphy worksheets boast over one million downloads.
City of Women Induction: When you arrive at Lindsey Bugbee's beautiful blog, The Postman's Knock, you feel like you're at your best friend's home. Her tone is warm and encouraging and she wants you to succeed. She's a gifted lettering artist with a huge following on social media, but she keeps no secrets about technique; instead, she shares everything with her audience via detailed tutorials and videos.
RPO: Please tell me how you first fell in love with calligraphy.
LB: When I was in high school circa 2005, my art teacher kept a copy of Sabrina Ward Harrison’s book Spilling Open in the art room. Spilling Open is a published sketchbook and in it, Harrison writes in a loose, delightfully messy style using a dip pen. I wouldn’t necessarily call what she does “calligraphy” (and I suspect she wouldn’t either), but I felt inspired by the irregular stroke widths, ink spatters, and unconventional way of writing! That was what first opened my eyes to the fact that you could use a dip pen to make words that communicate in two ways: first, through what they say and second, through how they are written.
RPO: People often ask me, "How long will it take me to learn calligraphy," and I've said that the journey is different for everybody. Tell me about your journey.
LB: I couldn’t agree more that the journey is different for everyone. Your success depends on the quality of the instruction that you’re using to learn, how much time you have to practice and what that practice entails, and what kind of motivation you have.
As far as my own journey, I played around with the dip pen in high school, but I couldn’t really harness its power to make anything other than messy letters. After I graduated from university in 2011, I was working at a software company and a coworker mentioned to me that she used to write calligraphy on wedding invitation envelopes for extra money. This concept was totally new to me, but after searching online and seeing what others were offering, I decided to throw my hat in the envelope addressing ring. At that point, I didn’t know how to use a dip pen, so I was just offering faux calligraphy commissions. Eventually, I wanted to uplevel but honestly, there weren’t a lot of pointed pen learning resources available online. I read what I could to figure out how to use a dip pen (when Molly Suber Thorpe published Modern Calligraphy, that was huge for me!), and I started documenting my calligraphy learning journey on my blog. Through the TPK blog, I connected with people who shaped my journey with tips and inspiration, like penmaker Rodger Mayeda and calligrapher Phyllis Macaluso. I also was able to take on a lot of clients whose requests provided me with challenges that allowed me to grow in skill and repertoire. (For example, in 2013, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator for the sole purpose of making foil stamped wedding invitations for a couple in North Carolina!)
RPO: At what point were you confident enough in your skills to begin teaching others?
LB: Teaching others was actually my husband’s idea. In 2014, he suggested that I design a printable worksheet for people to learn how to write a specific calligraphy style. He was inspired by a workbook called “Coquito” that kids learn how to write with in Peru, where he grew up. I put together a crude version of a worksheet -- it was only 2 pages long with unintuitive guidelines -- and put it on my site for people to download for free. I was shocked at its success, so I ended up making a more detailed version, which I sold for a nominal fee. That first worksheet inspired more worksheets (which now, thankfully, are polished and professional), video courses, and in-person workshops. I genuinely enjoy explaining things, so teaching is a good fit for me.
I think it’s interesting to note that we see printable calligraphy worksheets all the time now. Surely someone was offering printable worksheets before I was, but TPK has had a huge hand in popularizing digital calligraphy worksheets. We’ve had over one million downloads -- both for free and premium calligraphy worksheets -- on the site! It’s so amazing to me that the idea behind those worksheets came from a simple children’s handwriting workbook in Peru.
RPO: I'm amazed at how much content you create! How do you balance daily practice, a toddler, content development, classes, social media posts, and more?
LB: I have a couple of secrets to balancing it all. First, I had to stop taking on client commissions in 2016, when it became clear that I needed to choose between growing the TPK website or continuing to offer calligraphy-focused custom design work. Now, I might work with a magazine every once in a while or design wedding invitations for a friend. However, for the most part, all of the work I create is for The Postman’s Knock website. Second, I take advantage of living in a college town (Boulder, Colorado). I have four university students who help me part-time to package up website orders, answer emails, and stay on top of social media. I’d be lost without them! Third, my husband, Hernán, helps me out like you wouldn’t believe. He’s a web developer who constantly works on the website, collaborates with me on blog post content, and is always up for distracting my toddler when I need some time to concentrate. (Those two are on a hike right now, in fact, as I answer these questions!)
RPO: What's your all-time favorite piece of artwork?
LB My all-time favorite piece of artwork is Botticelli’s La Primavera. I saw it in the Uffizi Gallery when I was studying art history abroad in Italy, and I fell in love with its imagination and detail. I love mythology and fairytales -- I wrote my university honors thesis over the Aarne-Thompson fairytale classification system -- so La Primavera appeals to me both on an aesthetic and conceptual level!
RPO: Name your favorite color combination.
LB: I’m very fickle when it comes to color combinations. Right now, I’m loving the trendy white/gold/black color combination. Last year, though, I would have said turquoise and brown.
RPO: What are your three favorite non-calligraphy Instagram accounts to follow?
LB:
I love @traciecheng’s fluid paintings, and I hope to own one someday!
@ottolenghi’s posts never fail to make me hungry, and he seems to have a lovely personality. My dream is to travel to London to meet him because I absolutely adore his books!
@mirdinara’s folksy artwork always transports my imagination to a colorful, artistic place. Her page makes me feel so inspired!
RPO: I love asking calligraphers what typefont is your favorite and least favorite.
LB: Haha! My favorite typeface is a sans serif beauty called “Gotham”. It’s delightfully simple, which is how I feel typefaces should be. My least favorite is probably “Bombshell Pro”. It’s that typeface that everyone uses to mimic hand-written modern calligraphy on wedding invitations. When I see it, I get a little annoyed that people didn’t create calligraphy themselves or hire a calligrapher -- though I feel a little snobby saying that because calligraphy takes time or money, and both of those things are at a premium for a lot of people. So, while I understand why Bombshell Pro and similar fonts are a wedding favorite, I still don’t personally like it very much.
RPO: If flourished script were an author, who would she/he be?
LB: Flourished script would be Gabriel García Márquez! García Márquez is one of the founders of magical realism, which is literature that combines the mundane and the fantastic to result in believable magic. When you write calligraphy, that’s exactly what you’re doing: infusing a word (or an address) with imagination to make it into something special!