The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

March 6th, 2008

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

A few days ago, Keeran sent me a link to this video by Job & Roel Wouters. It’s such a beau­ti­fully simple piece. Watch­ing Job draw the let­ter­forms is mes­meric enough, but when his son (?) joins in, I found myself laugh­ing as he tries to imit­ate his fath­ers work. This leads to some funny-looking char­ac­ters (c and d are par­tic­u­lar favour­ites of mine). 

I’m par­tic­u­larly jeal­ous of the assured free-hand script of Job. It really is a joy to watch.

‘abcde­fghijklmnopqr­stuvwxyz’

a video by Job & Roel Wouters

recor­ded in Ams­ter­dam at stu­dio Xelor early 2008 

Hand 1: Gradus W. Wouters, Ams­ter­dam, the Neth­er­lands, 2003

Hand 2: Job Wouters, Leiden, the Neth­er­lands, 1980 

Dir­ector: Roel Wouters 

Dir­ector of pho­to­graphy: Sal Kroon­en­berg

Music: Rik Elst­geest & Bo Koek

Pro­duc­tion asst: Ton de Munck 

notes from the dir­ector:

‘Job and Gradus are both ambi­tious con­cern­ing let­ters. Spon­tan­eous jam ses­sions in our stu­dio inspired us to make this film about the fun draw­ing letters’

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am and is filed under Design.

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14 Responses to “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz”

  1. Jason Armstrong said on: March 6th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Funny and I really love the accom­pa­ny­ing music! Thanks for shar­ing Mark.

  2. Julian Schrader said on: March 6th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    WOW, great movie! Love it — down­load­ing to iPhone… ;-)

  3. Charlie Park said on: March 6th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    I love how almost every single one of the son’s char­ac­ters starts out with the force­ful down­ward stroke. I don’t know if that pat­tern would have been evid­ent if it were in real-time, but see­ing it sped up like that, his ‘fist’ is pretty visible.

  4. Dominik Lenk said on: March 6th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Awe­some video, but it only seems to work on You­Tube and not on your site…

  5. Chris Carpenter said on: March 7th, 2008 at 1:47 am

    Just fab­ulous! You just watched the next gen­er­a­tion in action. Plus the music was really cool and very engaging.

  6. AndyR said on: March 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Great fun post, who was the music by I thought it was so uplift­ing! AJ

  7. Nikol said on: March 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Strange, but noth­ing inter­est­ing I did not see here.

  8. mmo said on: March 14th, 2008 at 7:35 am

    This video is very well done. The cal­li­graphy, speed, pre­ci­sion, is a thing of true beauty. I wish I could write/draw like this. Cute with his kid doing it as well ;)

  9. Sam Hardacre said on: March 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    This is fantastic! 

    I love the con­trast between the two styles. The father style is con­trolled and eleg­ant, the son’s fairly ran­dom yet pleas­ingly abstract : )

  10. zeb said on: March 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    Pretty cool and hil­ari­ous at the same time. W was my favorite :)

  11. Barbara said on: March 17th, 2008 at 12:37 am

    Cool music! That’s all I can say

  12. Ionic said on: March 20th, 2008 at 3:18 am

    Noth­ing intersting!

  13. Richard Henry said on: March 20th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    This makes you want to work in video pro­duc­tion. I love shorts like this.

  14. Stephan Riess said on: March 24th, 2008 at 3:01 am

    Nice idea, nice typo, nice music.

    And, puhh, the intro leaves me with a desire to improve my handwriting.

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