DESIGN /// DREW MELTON
CLIENT /// ANCHOR PAPER CO.
CATEGORY /// TYPOGRAPHY
Drew Melton wasn’ t one of those kids who was obsessed with lettering and pursued it as his life’ s calling. Quite the opposite, in fact.“ This idea of becoming an illustrative letterer didn’ t occur to me until I dropped out of college and I was running my own design company. I was burnt out, and following amazing designers who were focused exclusively on lettering,” Melton says.” I really sucked at it at fi rst.” So he took a few months to focus solely on lettering and started the Phraseology Project( http:// phraseologyproject. com), where people would submit phrases and notations, and he would letter them and post them as practice. Talk about trial by fi re and exposing yourself to possible critics! Well, it worked. He started getting hired for his lettering work, and he hasn’ t looked back.
In 2012, Melton and his wife, Kelsey Zahn, started Anchor Paper Co., a high-end online stationery store.“ We were trying to fi nd thank you cards after our wedding. Being a designer, I hated everything we looked at, so we decided to make our own. Unfortunately, we didn’ t get them made in time to use ourselves,” he explains.
After crafting the anchor logo, Melton hand-lettered the company name. He says,“ The lettering is absolutely meant to look‘ anchored.’ My goal with the branding and design of the cards is meant to be timeless and reliable for years to come. I am trying to stay away from current trends with‘ anchor,’ because keeping up with trends is impossible.”
Each greeting card takes on its own distinct typographic style as well. For instance,“ Good Morning” feels sunny and bright, and“ Remarkable” feels bold and proud.“ The biggest thing I had to do was keep from overdesigning,” Melton says.“ We letterpressed the designs onto 180 pound paper, it’ s beautiful, but at the end of the day what makes the card valuable to someone is that there is all this white space for them to write a personal note. The design just elevates the importance of the interactions.”
Although anchors are pretty prominent in logos( there is even another Anchor Paper, which is a wholesale paper distributor), Melton and Zahn have an aversion to the symbol.“ My wife and I have anchor tattoos on our wrists— we got them done on a whim in Colorado before we got married. It’ s been an icon in our relationship, and since this is our side project together, we decided to call it Anchor, even though anchors are everywhere,” Melton says, laughing.
“ The cards are very minimal. I wanted to create a product that allows users to add value to it with their handwriting.”
— Drew Melton
Case Studies 29