Set Sail Studios has earned a reputation for being a premier source of handcrafted lettering for graphic design projects. Established by Sam Parrett, Set Sail Studios is a type foundry and online store that specializes in lettering that speaks with passion and personality. Graphic designers around the world flock to Sam’s type designs because they are expressive and authentic, often being crafted with real-world objects like ink and paint before being digitized.
Sam had always taken an interest in graphic design, even though he admits that he had never had much skill in drawing or painting in his younger years. As a guitarist for a local band more than a decade ago, Sam learned to use Photoshop on his own to create logos and flyers since the band couldn’t afford to pay anyone to do it.
Those early projects sparked an interest in graphic design and Sam entered into a freelance career around 2010.
Set Sail Studios actually began as a joint venture between Sam and a photographer friend of his, Steven Prebble, to offer both photography and graphic design services from a single source. Most of their work was centered on logo design and branding, particularly for the music industry – a sector that thrives on artistry, passion, and handcrafted type designs.
When one of Sam’s logo concepts was rejected, he explored the lettering further on his own, eventually crafting his very first type design. Eventually, Sam and Steven parted ways on good terms and Sam immersed himself in a full-time career as a type designer, releasing his work under the Set Sail Studios label.
Sam finds inspiration for new type designs everywhere, even if it means scrolling through social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest for ideas or to see what styles are currently trending. Sam has an inherent understanding of what graphic designers need in their workspace and that, combined with his love for handcrafted lettering, equates some truly amazing typography.
The UK-based type designer prefers to take a hands-on approach to his work, a method that enables each type design to develop its personality organically. While many of his type designs begin on paper, eventually being vectorized and tweaked digitally, some of his work is crafted entirely on the computer. Even though designing directly on the computer means that he doesn’t have to deal with a lengthy character-by-character scanning process, he still enjoys working with physical design tools like paint, ink, and paper.
One of his most recent releases is Boston Skyline, a sans and script font duo that offers lettering in both clean and rough textures. Boston Skyline pairs a strong uppercase sans serif with a bold connective script, which work well together or on their own.
Boston Skyline Sans features heavy, easily-legible all-caps lettering that speaks with confidence and clarity. It’s available in a Clean version that offers its letterforms in a solid design, and it’s also available in a Rough style that adds a vintage letterpress feel instantly. Boston Skyline Sans is ideal for logos, product packaging, merchandise, apparel, marketing materials, posters, advertisements, branding and identity projects.
Boston Skyline Clean features upper and lowercase cursive lettering written with a masculine hand. Its lettering is written swiftly, lending a sense of passion and urgency to its structure. Boston Skyline Clean offers an Alt version, giving designers a complete second set of handwritten lettering so they can mix and match characters from each to create truly unique and authentic-looking strings of letters and words. Boston Skyline Rough and Rough Alt provide those same letters with a distressed texture for even more versatility.
Boston Skyline’s script letter sets are perfect for everything from greeting cards and invitations to event programs, marketing materials, posters, flyers, logos, product packaging, merchandise, apparel, website designs, mobile applications, social media imagery, banners, displays, signage, branding, and identity projects.
To round out the entire family, Boston Skyline also includes a set of 57 Clean and Rough Swashes for additional emphasis and flair in design projects.
Boston Skyline’s scripts offer standard ligatures and the entire family extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, and Pan African Latin languages for design projects intended for an international audience.
Set Sail Studios currently offers 56 products through YouWorkForThem. If you love working with handwritten type designs with a lot of personality, you’ve got to check out the rest of Sam’s portfolio and bookmark it so you can watch for new additions as they arrive!
