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202 Start strong. Fumble the middle bit. End strong. Few notice. The rush to isolate that clamorous “The” is over, an uncomfortable contemplation of logic governing these letters is all that’s left. The remainder of this perfumey script is a difficult blend of typographic and calligraphic attepmts. It’s built on the familiarity of Bernhard¹ and² contemporary’s³ Deco advertising type work but had 30ish years’ time to get muddy with nostalgia and lettering laziness. It is 1960 though you would never know it by the illustration, and maybe that’s the point. Start strong, “The” has fiery conviction, swash upon big capital thrusting swash. Fumbling the middle bit, the calligraphy attitude stops, entering a state of stylized Modern-ish italic4 implying a formal script but abandoning the genre’s customary connecting strokes. The strategy is forgiving in metal type, no fiddly bits to get mangled and ruin the illusion. Open letterspacing like this gets (more) permissive, no stray entry and exit hairlines looking like unfinished statements halting the effortless grace of a script to a stutter. Then some typographic hair extension descenders were clipped into place. Long strictly straight strokes retain little of “The”’s joy. They look, sadly, one size fits all. End strong, the script-like italic finds its voice. Characters such as the “f”s receive due “The”-like flourishes rather than the baseline blunted stroke used for “of.” Image swiped from mikeyashworth5. 1 http://www.myfonts.com/search/%28lucian+bernhard+script%29/fonts/” 2 http://dailytypespecimen.com/post/29486193624/raleigh-cursive-specimen 3 http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/coronet/ 4 http://www.marksimonson.com/article/213/introducing-filmotype-zanzibar 5 http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/4394946214/