Tattoos: Sailor's Engraving

Tattoos have been around since man figured out how to do. Basically since before we were a twinkle in the eye of a great-great-great-great, men and woman were permanently marking themselves.

I got my first tattoo a long time ago, a decade or so. I have since gone about covering a large percentage of my body. Most of the tattoos I have do come with alot of copy. My arms read like a book, and my wife is constantly busting my chops about it (despite the fact she did a few of them, including the one above).

I’ve seen a lot of blogs and books talking about typography in tattoos. I believe there are even several flickr sites devoted exclusively to the topic. These are not new ideas people. They are completely different things. There is as much typography in tattoos as there is in a hand-drawn punk fliers. Zilch. Just cause it has letters it is not typography. It is beautiful design, it is amazing art. It is not typography.

To quote a smarter man than myself, “Typographers set copy 8 hours a day and are in a union.” That is about how much typography there is in tattoos. Now if people are passionate about letters, and want to get certain ones because they have an emotional connection to them, then yes. Please, get it done, the more tattoos the merrier. I even have a want for a some certain characters myself, but I will maintain it is not typography. Letters have been used in tattooing long before there was fontographer.

I collect tattoo books and artwork and was even trying to learn to tattoo for a long time. Over the years I’ve gathered a bit of history. For a gift one year my wife found an amazing book. It’s one of my favorite possessions.
 

 

Living Picture Books
Portraits of a Tattooing Passion 1878 - 1952
Remembered and Photographed by Herbert Hoffmann

Born in Pomerania in 1919, Hoffmann is today a living legend. In 1949, when he returned from four years in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, Herbert Hoffmann resolved to find the tattooed people he had once known, who had been shining examples to him, and in the truest sense of the word - to 'capture' them. Over three decades the amateur with his Rolleiflex took portrait photographs of almost 400 tattooed people, born between 1878 and 1952. This beautiful book lovingly collects those portraits of the heavily tattooed people and their personal stories. In English and German. Published in 2000 by Memoria Pulp. (Oversized) 9 3/4 x 13 1/2, Hard Cover with dust jacket, 280 pages.(Out of print)
Amazon Listing

This is why I am so infatuated with tattoos. I love the way they look when we get old, blue and blurry and abstract. The first tattoo I had ever seen looked like this. It was a spider-web on my grandpa’s back and it scared the bejesus out of me swimming one day.

All of the men and women in this book, were sailors, seamen, sideshow characters, and former soldiers. They covered themselves in the representations of their trade, be it images or type. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the books.
 

Oscar & Emma | Sideshow Performers
 

Herbert | Seaman
 

Otto | Dockworker
 

This is tattoos and tattooing for me. It’s not a television show, its not something you pay hundreds of dollars an hour for, it’s not club flyers, it is not typography. That is what I want to look like one day. I’m pretty well on my way to Otto...we dress the same too. However, as of recent there has been alot of talk about typography of tattoos. If you go to myfonts.com and search the word tattoo, you get a whole mess of fonts that more or less are the representation of the classic serifed sailor face and the script.

  

But this is not right. You don’t get the sense of the iconographic letters in the images above. These feel hollow and cold. That is because these are not a fare representation of typography of tattoos. The thing that makes the letters used in tattooing so great is the fact it is done by hand. That is the true sense of the idea. Just as most good projects feature alot of ground work on the type, the same thing can be said for the letters in tattoos. The reason these fonts are so popular is not that it is a tattoo font, but they want to convey the idea of a tattoo. Hand-made, forever, strong.

As for the notion of tattoos as typography. Typography is an exact science. it is good and it is bad. Tattoos as a medium, do not lend themselves well to exactness. Yes it can get close and they are only getting better, but there are a cavalcade of things that affect how they look. Namely age. Find an old salt and look at the letters on this tattoos. They are blurred, they are muddied, and more than likely, they are close to illegible. That’s why old tattoo artist used very blocky letters. Was to allow for this natural aging tendency. That is why I do not consider tattoos with certain type faces or a single character typography.

Here is a tip to those designer out there who have those fonts. Don’t use them. Draw it.
 

 

You will spend more time in illustrator correcting spacing and drawing ligatures to make that look like a real tattoo, than it would be if you do it by hand. Heck that drawing took me 10 minutes, I didn't even measure out straight lines for heaven sake! It's madness. Looks a lot better than the junk above it. If your gonna represent something that was done by hand, do it by hand. Save your 19 dollars to for that tattoo. And, a letter tattooed on your skin is not typography. It is art, it is a tattoo, it is a letter, heck, its even lettering, but let the chorus sound once more, it is not typography.
 

Comments

[Scott Johnson]

I put Tattoo lettering into the same category as many metal band logos. Sure it uses letters but it's hardly typography. The same applies to Graffiti in my mind. Typography to me is about the individual characters and how they relate to each other in a given typeface. The mechanics and beauty of that finished typeface defines typography not how that type is used in a design. But yeah I agree Tattoos may contain a lettering but it's not typography.