When most people talk about meeting celebrities, people probably think of the Alec Baldwin, Michael J. Fox and Mackelmore’s of the world. When I get excited about meeting a celebrity, it’s because I’m meeting the one and only Seb Lester, a master calligrapher. My friends laughed at me, but meeting Seb Lester (and getting to attend a private workshop with him) was definitely one of the highlights of my year, if not my college career.
When I heard about Thought at Work, a student-run design conference, I was hesitant about attending. The second I heard that Seb Lester would be the keynote speaker, I jumped on the opportunity. The fact that Seb was offering a contest for a private calligraphy workshop was an extra exciting bonus.
I entered my lettering submission of “Believe in Yourself’ and I ended up getting selected for the workshop!
Seb provided us all with some of his recommended tools at the workshop:
- Oblique pen holder
- Copic Wide
- Pilot Parallel Pen
- Tombo Brush
- Ruling Pen
- Pointed Brush
- Noodler pens
- Namiki Pen (Falcon)
- Niko G
- Marker Paper
- T-square and ruler
Seb gave us some practice lettering sheets for an italic style, which was cool. He told a bunch of us about how hard work, focus, believing in yourself, and finding your passion is crucial to success. Seb also talked about how he has never even been trained in calligraphy—his hard work amazes me. If you haven’t seen his logo renditions, you should check them out here.
All in all, meeting and working with Seb Lester was an amazing experience, and taking some of his lettering back to my office (see the Alphabet flourish demonstration) might be even cooler.