Born in 1956 Ewan Clayton grew up near Ditchling, Sussex, home to the calligrapher Edward Johnston, the type designer Eric Gill and the artist poet and inscription maker David Jones. Having graduated in 1979 with a Joint Hons. MA in Medieval History with Psychology from the University of St. Andrews Ewan trained as a calligrapher and bookbinder with Ann Camp at the Roehampton Institute, London. He then established his workshop at Ditchling Sussex in the Guild of craftsmen founded by Gill in the 1920s, where three generations of his family had lived and worked as silk weavers. From the 1990s onwards Ewan worked as a part time consultant at the Palo Alto Research Centre of the Xerox Corporation (PARC) and co-founded The Edward Johnston Foundation in Ditchling. He has curated exhibitions and published on Codes and Messages - Contemporary Lettering (for the Crafts Council) 1996, Handwriting Everyone Art (1998), Calligraphy, Sumner Stone and Digital Type (1999), Contemporary Calligraphy East and West (2000-1), David Jones (2004), Edward Johnston (2006). His work has been exhibited in many countries in Europe, North America and East Asia. Since 2006 he has been Professor in Design at the University of Sunderland.