Timothy Donaldson is a letterworker. He was formed in the North West of England, an only child of Yorkshire parents. He developed an obsessive interest in drawing during his first decade which matured into another obsession with writing (still drawing) during his second one. During his third decade he was a journeyman signwriter, earning his crust in pursuit of the just forming of letters. By his fourth decade he dropped ‘signwriter’ and started to use a grander phrase, ‘lettering artist’, to describe himself. He is well known for an ongoing experiment with tools and chirographic mark-making, particularly in large scale performances which explore the convergence of group narratives, divergent orthographies, semiotics and action drawing. He performs and lectures internationally, designs typefaces and contributes to the global corpus of critical graphic design writing (his book ‘Shapes for sounds’ [an overview and theory on the emergence and future of the Latin alphabet] is being found to be useful all around the world). He currently teaches in the beautiful seaside surroundings of University College Falmouth, in Cornwall, where he attempts to trace a meaningful path between the history, theory and practice of graphic design.
