Salt Lake City, UT – November 23, 2024 – Craft Lake City is ecstatic to announce the official presenter and workshop lineup for the upcoming Fourth Annual Craft Lake City LetterWest Conference taking place on March 14 & 15, 2025 held throughout several locally-owned venues on Midvale Main Arts & Culture District.
The Annual LetterWest Conference is the nation’s premier event celebrating the art of calligraphy and modern hand lettering, set to bring together a vibrant community of artists and creatives from around the world. Craft Lake City is partnering with Midvale City to host this event, which will feature an all-star lineup of industry-leading presenters.
This year, Craft Lake City is also excited to partner with Paper & Ink Arts as the official workshop material supplier. They will have a pop up store on-site ensuring that participants have access to top-quality tools and supplies for a truly immersive experience.
LetterWest conference attendees can expect a dynamic lineup of keynote speeches, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and a lettering meetup & mixer. Led by top lettering artists, calligraphers, graffiti artists, muralists, tattooists and designers, LetterWest is the only hand lettering conference in North America, offering a unique opportunity for both professionals and hobbyists to learn, connect and create.
Tickets for the Fourth Annual Craft Lake City LetterWest Conference will go on sale on November 25, 2024 at 10 a.m. MST!! Be sure to mark your calendars and secure your spot for this exciting event! Save this link to purchase tickets!
View the Presenter Lineup
Chaz Bojórquez
Keynote Speaker, Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Chaz Bojórquez is a Los Angeles-based graffiti artist, known for pioneering the iconic Cholo gang-style graffiti that revolutionized street art and earned him recognition around the world. With a career spanning over five decades, he has exhibited in more than 600 shows, authored three books, and received a Doctorate of Humane Letters for his significant cultural contributions.
Workshop
A Journey Through Style and Identity
In this 2-hour class, Chaz will share his 55-year artistic journey, demonstrating how to use letters as a creative tool to design a commercial logo from concept to completion.
Read SLUG Mag’s interview with Chaz here!
Ken Barber
Keynote Speaker, Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Ken Barber is a lettering artist, type designer, and educator based in Wilmington, Delaware, known for his award-winning “Lettering Manual” and work with major brands like Sandals Resorts and Jimmy Kimmel Live! With over 30 years of experience, his fonts and designs are featured in prestigious collections, and he currently serves as type director at House Industries and teaches at The Cooper Union.
Workshop
Flourished Script
In this workshop, you’ll learn essential lettering skills to create beautiful flourishes for logotypes and packaging, mastering stroke construction, embellishments, and drawing techniques to craft stunning script lettering.
Hayley Francis
Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Hayley Francis is a hand lettering artist and the founder of Type Affiliated, a design studio specializing in custom, vintage-inspired lettering for businesses and brands. With seven years of experience, she helps companies build strong connections with their audiences through unique visual branding, and also teaches Typography at Utah Valley University while offering workshops nationwide
Workshop
Client Logo Design: From Sketch to Vector
In this 4-hour workshop, Hayley will guide you through creating a custom hand-lettered logo, covering client strategy, ideation, sketching, and vectorizing, while providing insights into freelance work and logo design principles.
Melissa Esplin
Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Melissa Esplin is a professional lettering artist and teacher based in Utah, known for blending her love of calligraphy with a variety of creative hobbies. With a BFA in Painting & Drawing, she’s been teaching calligraphy since 2010, offering both in-person and online classes, while sharing her passion for letterforms and traditional calligraphy theory with students worldwide.
Workshop
Digital Script: Calligraphy in Procreate
In this 4-hour workshop, Melissa will teach you how to merge digital and analog lettering using Procreate on the iPad, guiding you through script lettering, flourishing, and designing a quote.
Cymone Wilder
Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Cymone Wilder is a senior art director and lettering artist in Nashville, with clients like Netflix, HBO Max, and Planned Parenthood. Since 2013, she’s created custom lettering for brands, books, and apparel. Passionate about meaningful work, her art draws from the Black experience, addressing social justice and societal issues using paints, pencils, and markers.
Workshop
Textured Lettering: Embracing the Rough Edges
In this workshop, we’ll create expressive lettering using basic shapes and simple tools—no expensive equipment needed. You’ll learn to add depth and dimension to a lettering poster and explore fun, unconventional ways to add texture with affordable, sometimes quirky methods.
Jill De Haan
Workshop Instructor & Panelist
Jill is a naturalist and lettering artist from Eden, Utah, who combines her love for nature with creative lettering and illustration to craft unique designs for clients across various mediums.
Workshop
Storytelling through Illustrative Lettering
Join Jill for a hands-on workshop where you’ll transform a simple word
into a nature-inspired masterpiece, learning techniques to build depth, perspective, and illustrate the beauty of Utah’s landscapes.
Kyle Letendre
Emcee & Host
Kyle Letendre is a Portland-based lettering artist and illustrator, known for blending type and image in work for clients like Target and Mercedes-Benz. Since 2016, they’ve run an independent studio, and will host this workshop as their drag persona, Tomboy, bringing bold shapes and sharp lines to life.
Becca Clason
Lettering Meetup & Mixup Host
Becca Clason, based in Logan, Utah, is a stop-motion artist and food lettering specialist who collaborates with brands and agencies worldwide to create videos and artwork for social media, TV commercials, and editorial projects. In 2017, she founded LetterWest, a hand-lettering conference and retreat, which has since been taken over by Craft Lake City.
Tickets for the Fourth Annual Craft Lake City LetterWest go on sale November 25, 2025!
About Craft Lake City:
Founded in 2009 by Angela H. Brown, Executive Editor of SLUG (Salt Lake UnderGround) Magazine, Craft Lake City® is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with the mission to educate, promote and inspire local artisans while elevating the creative culture of the Utah arts community through science, technology and art. Craft Lake City strives to further define the term “Craft,” by modernizing the definition for handmade creativity.
craftlakecity.com @craftlakecity
Craft Lake City’s year-round programming is supported in part by the residents of Salt Lake County through the Zoo, Arts & Parks (ZAP) Program, Utah Division of Arts & Museums the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation,the Sorenson Legacy Foundation and SLUG Magazine.
The Annual Craft Lake City LetterWest is the nation’s leading hand lettering conference. LetterWest is supported in part by Midvale Main Arts & Culture District, Midvale Arts Council, Staybridge Suites, Paper & Ink Arts, Dark Arts Midvale, and SLUG Magazine.