The Lost Art of Letter Writing
Unfortunately handwritten and typed letter writing has become a dying art. Email allows for instant responses, resulting in the structure of formalities of letter writing being somewhat sidelined. The Letters of Note website offers some fantastic letters from the letter writing era. It is a website that you could spend hours browsing through. When reading through these old letters, you get a unique sense of the need to fit in all the information in one swoop whilst being very charming. The simple personal touch of the signatures on the end of each letter really makes each individual letter that more impressive. We’ve picked out our favourite letters on the website from David Bowie, Cary Grant and Mick Jagger below.
This letter by David Bowie displays a wonderful interest in his first American fan who had written a letter to his London fan club offering to set up an American fan club. It was a lovely reply by Bowie, text version here.
A complete gem of a letter here by Cary Grant thanking Levi Strauss for shirts delievered to his house while suggesting perhaps they should introduce a plain coloured clothing range.
Here is another great letter from a musician, which has a particular interest to us graphic designers because the letter is a brief from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol inviting him to design an album cover for The Rolling Stones. See the text version of the letter here.
All images sourced from the great Letters of Note website.
