My registered business name is “Scribe Typography.”
I thought of the name about 1982 while I was practicing calligraphy in the sunny enclosed porch of my room in Berkeley, CA. I remember thinking that I intended to be a scribe, not a pen and ink scribe, but a person who made beautiful things with words. My business began with the naive wish that I follow an essentially medieval career model. At the time, typography was a bit like a guild: unionized, requiring expensive equipment, and arcane knowledge.
Eventually I owned my first computer, a Mac II, and used Freehand to draw a red tail hawk feather as the plume for my logo. I had met women who owned their own typography businesses, pre-Mac, or rather pre-Postscript. Instead of being tied to a lease, (see my blog post) I could work at home for about ten thousand dollars (Mac, software, and laser printer).
30+ years later, after being mis-addressed as “Scribe Photography” and “Scribe Topography” too often, and admitting that “typography” is not something people seek out as a service anymore, I opted for shorter, more age-of-internet name for my identity: VJB/Scribe.
vjb • scribe 