From the time he was a kid, Sean McCabe was obsessed, strike that, possessed, with letters.
The shape. The form. The curves and nuances. Not just the fonts you see on computers, but the ones drawn painstakingly by hand, whatβs come to be known as hand-lettering, consumed him.
A few years back, Sean began posting his work online. Nothing happened for the better part of two years. Then, lighting began to strike. In part, riding along with and, in part, helping to fuel a massive resurgence in both the practice and demand for hand-lettering, Seanβs posting began to catch fire.
People wanted to not only buy his work and hire him, though, they also relentlessly asked βhowβ he did what he did. Both as an artist, and as a professional whoβd built a career hand-lettering.
That demand kicked off a journey Sean never saw coming. One thatβs now led him into what he terms the next βseasonβ of his life, moving away from the practice of hand-lettering and into his role as a leader and teacher in the business-side of art. Heβs built a tremendous educational resource with his Learn Lettering course, a broadcast-quality podcast and video series with a global audience and an emerging career as a keynote speaker. And, thereβs lots more in the works.
In this weekβs episode, we dive into the exact steps along his journey. We explore how he developed his skills as a hand-letterer, then shifted his focus to cultivate the same depth of expertise in business and media. Sean is incredibly transparent and generous and he also shares a mountain of strategies for building not just a business, but a life. In fact, this conversation was recorded during one of his β7-week sabbaticals,β a one-week window that he takes work-free every seven weeks. We talk about how that began and, also, how sacred and important it has become.
Oh, and P.S. β An all-new Learn Lettering 2.0 classes will launch on July 27th, 2015. I was a student of the first one and I was blown away by both the depth of the content and the production values.
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