Popular Master Calligrapher Seb Lester Talks About His Fundamental Addiction to Lettering

Seb Lester, the popular master calligrapher who shares videos of his remarkable handwriting skills with a vast audience through Instagram and YouTube, talked to Booooooom about what inspires him in his craft and how addicting it can be.

The only difference between calligraphy and heroin is you can come off heroin. I jest, but letterform creation is fundamentally about addiction and compulsion for me. I haven’t felt like I have had a lot of choice in doing what I do for a long time now, but there is a lot of peace and joy to be found along the way. I spend a lot of time drawing letterforms, studying letterforms, thinking about letterforms and reading about letterforms. I live this. It’s the only way a print like my new Jerusalem print, for example, could come about. Jerusalem was a pretty epic undertaking. Over time I have developed a strong emotional connection to letterforms. Calligraphy and lettering offer me a very powerful form of self expression. Calligraphy feels like ancient magic to me, which is of course what it is.

Many of Lester’s incredible fonts and prints are available for purchase.