Custom Seal Designs
Seal
designs may be ordered at our on-line store at
Custom Seal Design.
As a calligrapher I will work with you on the design of the seal but not on the
physical seal. Most of my clients use a rubber stamp process than can usually be
done locally for a nominal cost.
I do work with you on each step of the process including the translation, font
selection and layout. I do this by showing you samples via email and making
changes based on your feedback. Once we arrive at a final design I would mail
you the final images on flat, white, acid-free paper.
The first step in deciding on a seal is to select the appropriate Japanese
characters for the name. The Names in Japanese page has
over 2000 names in Japanese. When ordering a seal design, several new options will be
given. Seals can be created using Katakana, Hiragana, or Kanji.
 Seals are generally written using a style called Tensho which is commonly
translated as "Seal Script". Examples of the five broad categories of script
styles are shown on the right. The character used for this example is "Yume"
(pronounced "You may") which means "Dream".
The next step is to decide on the size and shape of the stamp. Options are
oblong, round, square, and rectangular. Here we explore only the circle and square
options:
Once the size and shape has been decided, the next step is to determine
the general look and feel of the seal. The seals in red (shown below) are seals used by
Eri Takase in her work. (1) is one of Eri's nom de plume "Sairei"
written right to left. (2)-(4) use the first character "E" of "Eri".
The "E" of "Eri" is shown in (5) written in Kaisho script. And (7) is
Eri's full name "Takase, Sairei" written top to bottom and right to left.
(1) and (2) in black are written right to left. (3)-(4) in black are the
first character of the name.
By choosing the character and the style one can get varying levels of
complexity or simplicity depending on the desired design.
(6) is "Daikichi" which means "Great Luck" and is a
seal on many of Eri's work. It is placed in the upper right hand corner and has the effect
of drawing the eye back to the middle of the work by offsetting the red seal in the lower
left of the work.
Here the customer decided that the red version of (1) or (7) above was
what he was looking for. But because the "Ka" (the character on the left of (1))
is so simple, there is not much to work with. So we changed our approach. (1) and (2)
below use the last name, (3) uses the full name. (4) is another example of the first name.
And (5) and (6) are two different examples of the full name written top to bottom, left to
right.
Having decided that (1) from the above is just right, five samples of
varying line widths were created. This gives the graphic artist some choice when creating
the final designs. Both the original work and a digital version are created for the final
product.
This process is designed to give many options and many ideas leading to a
perfect design.
Seal
designs may be ordered at our on-line store at
Custom Seal Design.
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