I have had a fascination with letters and words for as long as I can remember and until a few years ago I didn't realize that my true fascination was with typography and lettering. The way letters can form so beautifully blows me away. It seems natural to focus my thesis on lettering and typography. The terminology is often confusing. Lettering is the art of drawing letters by hand, usually in a decorative manner. While typography is the study of letters applied to typefaces and usually the creation of typefaces, such as Helvetica. In my thesis, I plan to explore lettering in the digital age and how it is used in branding and advertising rather than modern techniques such as vinyl and ordinary lettering, questioning its value nowadays. I would like to focus specifically on sign writing and painting and ask whether it is still necessary to use these old methods when easier, faster and cheaper options are available. Will it ever become completely extinct? How much of our culture, as well as that of America, would we lose if this were the case? After watching a documentary called "Sign Painters" which told the stories of different sign painters and their craft, it made me think about the cultural aspect, aesthetic and historical value of the craft. The vinyl machine has put many sign painters out of business lately, and at what cost? Looking at old brick buildings, you can see the ghost of an old painted sign, whether it's a factory sign or an advertisement for what the building contained or sold. In the future there will be no trace of what was in the building as all shopkeepers, apart from a small number of independent businesses, use vinyl and plastic... in the middle of paper... or of our weakness – of our fallibility” (Sign Painters) and I can't help but agree with him. Since our world is so driven by technology, do we crave a more human touch in our daily lives? I think so. Being a letterer myself, I appreciate the delicate craft and prefer the human hand to the digital, reproduced and non-original option. Although technology makes our lives easier, we are losing the human touch and this almost alienates us from each other. However, the current onslaught of technology may be the reason why hand lettering continues to survive and may even fuel its comeback as “it is at the moment a craft disappears that its cultural value suddenly becomes apparent” (The Sign Painters , Glenn Adamson) and perhaps we are finally realizing the value and virtue of commerce in our technological world of gratification