One of Lauren Hom’s most recent commissions was to create a mural for Google. She designed and executed a 12 foot by 16 foot hand painted mural in Google’s VR offices located in San Francisco, California with the help from her two painting assistants, Chie Tamada and Jenna Carando. The mural features the phrase, “We’re Going Places,” in a bright pink, sophisticated yet playful cursive style. The background of the mural is a bright, deep blue and is littered with bright multicolored, almost leaf life, blobs. In a statement written on her blog, Hom writes about how she wanted to explore the duality of the meaning of the phrase. She wanted to bring out the hopeful feelings evoked by the words, which encouraged her to choose the bright and playful colors. Hom also chose to abstract the shapes in the background intentionally, creating a sense of momentum within the wall, representing the motion of moving forward with something. In this case she wanted to represent the moving forward of the technologies of virtual reality. 

I feel that this mural is reflective of a modern aesthetic to hand lettering. In the past five to ten years, there has been a resurgence of hand lettering. Its popularity among designers has grown tremendously due to a push against the sleek and sometimes harsh look of technology found in modernism. Hand lettering has grown popularity as it is a nod back to more traditional methods of print and typography. I think Lauren’s work is a beautiful example of today’s ideal of modern typography through her distinct hand lettering style.

 

Bibliography

Hom, Lauren. “Hom Sweet Hom.” Hom Sweet Hom, www.homsweethom.com/.