A Drawing and a Poem for St. John’s Day, and New Typefaces

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist is commemorated on the 24th day of June. Here is a drawing of the saint, and a poem I wrote for the occasion:

Ut Queant Laxis, a hymn on the Nativity of John the Baptist, is the source of the solfège mnemonic used in musical pedagogy. The 11th century musical theorist Guido of Arezzo derived this from the first syllables of its first six hemistiches, which are sung on successively higher notes:

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris, MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum, SOLve polluti LAbii reatum, Sancte Iohannes.

The seventh note in the scale was given the name SI, an abbreviation of Sancte Iohannes. My carol includes an acrostic of these same syllables in the wheel at the end of each verse.

This is from my second poetry collection, The Gustable God.

I have finished designing four more alphabets for my typeface Victor. Victor is an original typeface of display capitals, whose outlines are filled with tiny plants and animals, in the style of medieval millefleur tapestries. The complete version of the typeface is almost ready, and will be featured in a coming newsletter.