Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, September 13, 2022: Erik Marinovich, an American graphic designer, lettering artist (#1646)

Erik Marinovich is a San Francisco based lettering artist and designer, and is a co-founder of Friends of Type. Since 2009 he has drawn letters, logos and type for nice folks like: Nike, Target, Google, Hilton, Facebook, Sonos, Sharpie, The Criterion Collection, Air Canada, Gap, Ford Motor Company. In 2012 he co-founded Title Case, a creative work space that conducts workshops and lectures. Between client work, teaching and side-projects, you’ll find him on the road promoting Keep Fresh Stay Rad and Let’s Go Letter Hunting, two new releases from Friends of Type published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Interview
After graduation, there was no design work and I couldn’t find a job. The only job I could find was apprenticing with my dad in preparation to take over his masonry business. I did that for almost a year until I realized that, deep down inside, I wanted to do something more creative.

I had an awesome opportunity to intern at a small art gallery in San Jose and I took it. The gallery was showing Shepard Fairey, David Choe, and all these amazing artists. I was only an intern there, but I got to meet people who were similar in age to me and giving a big, “Fuck you!” to the world. They were doing their own thing, broke, and happy about it. That made me want more.

Then my girlfriend, who I was in a long-distance relationship with for two years, called me and said, “I think we should move to New York and start a new life together. I’m having a garage sale this weekend and selling all my stuff to save money and move there. You should do the same.” I replied, “Alright.” We saved enough money to move to New York and live there for three months. Those three months turned into over five years and my girlfriend is now my wife.

In New York City, I got a job at Landor Associates and that was where I had my first encounter with lettering. That job exposed me to every type of design under the sun and I often found myself spending a good portion of time noodling with type, but it took a while for lettering to turn into a full-time obsession.

My second encounter with lettering happened after I left Landor and moved on to another branding studio, FutureBrand. That was where I had my first lettering job, which was for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. I’m from the Bay Area and had been to the museum on many occasions, so I wanted to make the identity great. However, I was terrified because at the time, I wasn’t 100% confident with my skills at drawing letterforms in Illustrator. Thankfully, with the help of my patient creative director, Wally Krantz, and co-worker, Aaron Carámbula—who I later started Friends of Type with—I learned the tools, tips, and tricks to have a more comprehensive understanding of how letters work and pair together. And I’m happy to say that my hand-drawn logo type was selected to be used by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

My third and final encounter with lettering changed everything. My wife and I, who are restless souls, decided to leave New York and move to California. We lived in LA briefly and then settled in San Francisco. One day, after I had a bad client meeting, I drew a lettering sketch and sent it to my friend Aaron over iChat. He told me I should post it online, but oddly enough, there were no lettering sites at that time—at least none that we knew of. We decided to make one and eight hours later, Friends of Type was live. Aaron tweeted about it and it got retweeted and retweeted. Our visitors grew and although we had created the site as a side project and a way for us to keep in touch through a mutually loved medium, it turned into much more than that. At that point, we invited our two close friends, Jason Wong and Dennis Payongayong, to contribute to Friends of Type as well. Once they came on board, the four of us challenged each other so much that, for a year straight, we posted one to two new pieces of original content to the site each day. The first year of Friends of Type really allowed me to create a portfolio of personal lettering work that would later launch my lettering career.

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