Go Font Yourself!

Below I am posting copies of the email correspondence between myself and the president of Letterhead fonts. I placed an order earlier this evening for a font and some fancy borders to use on some prints I was planning on sending out for Christmas. Bare in mind at no point did I say that I am even a tattooer, let alone what I intend to use the fonts for. He must have seen my email address and figured out all he needed to know.  He declined my order and then insulted both me and my profession. I will let the email correspondence show what I mean. Holly stopped me from getting too aggressive in my final response to him.
The truly astounding part is that I was willing to pay $170 for 1 font and 2 design elements. Screw me for trying to do things honestly and properly.

Here are the emails:

1. From chuck to me:


Your order has been refunded in full. You should see the funds back in your
PayPal account immediately.

Tattoos are prohibited use and Letterhead Fonts may not be used for that
purpose.

Regards,
--Chuck

Chuck Davis, President
Letterhead Fonts

2. My reply to Chuck


Hey chuck,
I am confused as to the reasoning for canceling my order. Your message says tattoos are prohibited use. Where did I even state that was an intent. I am also an illustrator, and had planned to use the font and borders as embellishments for prints I was making for Christmas presents.
I am surprised and frankly I am quite insulted that you would block an order to me as the result of my profession. I got a message stating i would receive a call. Had you done that I could have explained my intended use. As for lettering in tattoos, I pride myself in creating the fonts I use. Quite honestly, if I were to use any of your fonts as an inspiration I could just look at your website. In this case I was looking to pay a fair bit of money to save the time of hand lettering the prints I am making.
I was turned on to your website/fonts from a sign painter friend of mine. I was even working with him to design a new sign for my shop Now I will be calling him to tell him his referral does not want my business, and I will happily choose another source.

It's a shame you don't want my business.

Scott Bramble
scottbramble.com


3. Chuck's reply to me






Scott,

Frankly I'm insulted that you would attempt to insult my intelligence. Do
you use other fonts for tattoos-- either directly or indirectly. Have you
ever?

Once they were installed, would you promise never to use them for tattoos?
Come on.

That said (and I'm serious about this), if you can make your own fonts,
there is a real market to capture... fonts for tattoo artists. As I have
done, you could focus on fonts that are specially tailored to guys like
yourself. That would be very successful. Having cornered a market for that
and becoming known for those kinds of fonts-- you'd have a very stable and
lucrative business.

I encourage you to think about it. I wish you success.

--Chuck




4. My reply to Chuck:



Chuck,
Insult your intelligence?! Clearly you are showing your deficiencies in that department just fine. I placed an order for fonts and borders provided for use by designers. I am working on a design completely unrelated to tattooing in any way. The design is not even intended for profit, but for a Christmas gift to friends and family. You used your intelligence to deduct that because i have an email address that has the word tattoo in it, i must be using the font for tattooing. Then i explained i have no intent to use your font for tattooing, and you are all but calling me a liar. When lettering is involved in the design, I draw it by hand to suit the design. scanning a drawing into the computer to work a layout around your fonts would be a waste of time and effort. you clearly have a set idea of what it is to be a tattoo artist, and apparently part of that idea is that we as a profession are dishonest. How are you involved in an artistic business yourself with such limited vision.

So am i insulting your intelligence... at this point yes i am.
i am also insulting your integrity. You called into question my motives and canceled my order without talking to me about it first. Then you have continued down the road of defending that error in your judgment and follow that with not so veiled insults. Your passive aggressive suggestion that I make a go in the lucrative business of font design is astounding. All i wanted was a font for a print, and instead i got an entirely new direction for my career. Wow.

happy holidays
scott bramble



I await a reply from him at this point. Tho I don't expect one.
Please spread the word that this companies president follows such absurd and demeaning business practice. I rarely get so wound up over matters, but this guy is too much to take.
Thanks
Scott

London Convention 2010

    I'm writing this while on the return flight from London. ( yeah i did write it then, but haven't had the chance to post it till now....over a week later ah well) I've watched some flat out awful movies, and figured I'm much better taking the next few hours thinking back on the week that just passed. As usual leaving a trip like that one has left me with mixed feelings. To start with, I had a pretty damned amazing time with the fellows I stayed with. Turk, Safwan, Jee and I all shared an apartment in east London. It would make me the fool to come out of that without at least wanting more out of myself. Conversations and the quiet time drawing at the apartment were as inspiring this trip as touring the city had been previous trips. We of course got out a bit to see the city and made the best of what little chance we had. On Monday we got out to the Freemasons' Hall, the United Grand Lodge of England. It certainly leaves a person with a sense of wanting to be better. When seeing the dedication and work that went into the construction and decoration of the hall, I had to come out of there wanting to be a better man. A similar feeling came last year while visiting Washington's chapel in valley forge, PA. It's funny how history can bring that out simply by showing what is possible with hard work, determination, and the desire to do something properly.

    As for the convention itself, I was lucky enough to stay busy all weekend. There were a few new customers and a few I had worked with in previous years. Establishing the friendships with those folks really makes me count myself lucky. I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed sitting with each of the folks. Instead I'll post the photos of them and save you the long winded recount. I do however want to get into one of them, not to play favorites, but to express a particularly gratifying experience. As I've written in the past I have been conflicted with the idea of developing and even pushing a particular look and approach in my work. I have slowly been leaning more in that direction and this weekend one of my customers really allowed me to embrace that aspect. I tattooed him last year and we had talked about the more illustrative approach to my work. It
apparently struck a chord with him, and this year he really gave me something to sink my teeth into. He comes from a long family history of coal miners in Yorkshire England. To represent that he explained he wanted a zombie coal miner. There were a few specific elements he wanted to see somehow worked in, but left the overall design up to me. After sketching out some ideas, I had come up with the thought of having the miner holding a bird cage with a dying canary exhaling his last song. I had researched the history of English coal mining and saw that they had used the canaries as gas detection as recently as 1987.
That cinched it to me and I drew up the design. I was really excited when showing him the drawing he was into the canary idea. Especially since it sort of became a major element in the layout. By the time we finished our 6-7 hour sitting, he expressed that the bird and cage was his favorite part. We unfortunately didn't get the entire tattoo done, but we will surely finish next year. Heres some shots of a few of the tattoos from the show. most of the tattoo photos didnt come out very well, so here are the ones that at least look ok:

    In another facet of last week, I got a call from Holly as soon as the plane landed in London. Apparently there was a leak in the middle of our waiting room. There are apartments upstairs, and there was a pipe issue from one of them. Thankfully Holly and the guys at the shop were able to deal with it without me. There was limited damage, but waiting for the property owner to act on putting things right may take too long. Awesome.

    On top of shop issues, Holly had a ton of other responsibilities as well. We agreed to dog sit for some dear friends while they get married in Italy, and honeymoon in Spain. They have a rad young Boston terrier named Milo. Also she recently started back at school, so she was pretty overwhelmed while I was out enjoying myself. She's pretty awesome for supporting me so much and making it possible to take these trips.

    So to Sum up and end this post, clearly my thanks are due. To the fellows I spent the week with, to the folks that were kind enough to let me work with them, to the guys at the shop for stepping up and taking care of the leak, and lastly and importantly to Holly for holding the the whole home front together.

Here are some more random shots from the weekend :

Like a badpenny, I have returned to Blogger.

For the record, I had tried for a little bit to use another blogging site called Tumblr. There are a few posts on there ya may haven't seen yet. so if ya have any interest, here's a link to them. From now on tho, I will be posting here again. Tumblr just seemed to have all sorts of bells and whistles, that i never used.

Friday the 13th at the shop

For Friday 13 this year we held a benefit for some dear friends of ours. The nature of the Benefit was for all three of us to tattoo all day, hold a raffle, Holly and Pati baked some goodies to sell, and we made t-shirts. Each artist kept a small % to pay for supplies and the rest went to our friends. We each drew up designs themed to the day, and did them for either $50 or $100 depending on the size and involvement of the tattoo. Man, it went over great! We each did 10-15 tattoos, sold a bunch of shirts, and overall had a blast.

There was a ton of prep work to be done and I definitely overextended myself, but it worked out in the end. I painted a design for the postcards, redrew the same design in pen and ink for the t-shirts, and put all the designs together. That didn’t leave me a ton of time to get my flash together, and like a moron I decided to do a poster sized sheet with around 50 designs. As it turned out, I didn't get it entirely done by the start of Friday, but all the designs were outlined so they at least were done enough for folks to pick from the sheet. I plan to still finish the sheet and make prints to send to out to some friends.

Anyway, here are photos from the day. There are some of the tattoo photos. A few didn't come out very well so I'll have to wait to get healed pics.

line sheet 1

line sheet 2

line sheet 3

sheet of flash, needs to be finished, but im happy with it so far.

raffle items

Holly and Pati's baked goodness

Me tattooing Jen's neck

T-shirt

gone fishin'

I have had my hands full with work and illustration assignments for the past month. I have every intent of posting what has been getting done... just not the energy to really get into anything heavy or overly thought driven in this post. The result of being busy as hell, is the lack of motivation in talking about it.
So here are the photos of some of the more relaxed moments this month. More specifically some shots from a few nights out by the river and the lake.
There has been so much on my mind lately, that it makes it hard to focus. I've been so damn busy with drawing and tattooing, there hasn't been the chance to really decompress and sort through day to day stresses. late at night, sitting alone by the water is about as perfect an opportunity to clear my head as any. Here's the proof...

broken dolls

The past few weeks have been a tad on the hectic side. Between Hospital visits, tattoo conventions, and just flat out working my tail off… there is no shortage of things to talk about. I’ll eventually get to the other activities, but this post will cover a trip with some friends to an antique flea market. So here’s the story:

I was lucky enough to get out to Rennenger’s antique flea market a few Thursdays ago. I went with a couple of good friends, Turk and Elvis Lewis. All three of us found a thing or two we couldn’t live without. In Turk’s case a bit more than Elvis and I. That fella has a mission when he hits these things, and he finds some pretty damn creepy/cool stuff. He tends toward the macabre with his taste, and this trip didn’t disappoint. I’ll leave it to him to post about his finds, he keeps his blog at his site Left Hand Black.

One of the things I really enjoy while antique shopping is taking photos of the stuff that catches my eye. I think it helps keep me from buying every damn thing I come across. I tend to do it on the sly with my little digital camera. The fun part trying to be stealthy, is not really knowing how the photos are going to turn out. Sometimes I even forget the stuff I shot, till I get home and go over them all. I usually tend to lean towards the particularly creepy and weird things people sell. I’m sure there is value in some of this stuff, but I can’t for the life of me figure out to whom. The folks that are selling this stuff travel from event to event across the country, so I’m sure they know better than I.

Anyhow below are the photos from our trip. Don’t forget you can click on the image to see it full size.

Take care,

Scott