Posted by Mike Jackson on October 16, 2003
Robin SharrardHi all,
I'm not too sure if everybody knows much about the history of the Hand Lettering Forum. I think it is important so I'll try to let the newcomers know.
About 4, maybe even five years ago, Sarah Schwartz created the first Hand Lettering Forum on one of those freebie sites. She was the sole operator and host and everything was great for a while. Then, as many things change on the Internet, that freebie site closed up so she started another one on a different freebie site. Again, that worked fine for a while until the hosts at the freebie site started including their own banners at the top, and finally the site started including annoying pop-ups. Near the end, you got a new pop-up everytime you read a message and every time you clicked on a new page.
At about that time, a few of us agreed it was a good idea to create an "Original Letterheads" page, with the thumbs up approval of the Denver group. I registered the web site name with Internic and built a few generic pages with basically "institutional information" about Letterheads. I don't think it had but 8 or 9 total html pages, but I was paying for 100 megs of storage monthly. I volunteered to move the Hand Lettering forum to the site where it currently resides. A year ago, and again this year, the Denver chapter of Letterheads paid for the costs of hosting the site.
The Hosts: Sarah Schwartz, Kent Smith, Carol Chapel and myself have the usernames and passwords to edit undesireable posts, if neeeded. So far, people have been great!
We don't see Sarah and Carol posting on here as much as they used to. I just wanted to personally say "thanks" to them for starting the forum. I hope they post more often--they both have so much to offer.
Mike Jackson, co-host
Mike, As one of the "newcomers" to this site I'd like to thank you for sharing its history. Not only is there a wealth of knowledge and history here, the people are very helpfull. I only hope that I can contribute to its rich history...Robin
Denver Chapter of the Letterheads