LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING
Happy Tuesday! This week we’re drawing dimensional tulips in Procreate! We’ll start with a sketch template, fill our petals in with color, then utilize stackable clipping masks for our shadows and highlights (if you’ve taken my
Today I’m excited to announce my newest online course, 3D Lettering in Procreate! This course will walk you through all of the tools, workflow and effects needed to create believable + stunning, pop-off-the-screen dimensional iPad lettering! The course was created with beginners in mind and includes an entire ‘beginner basics’ section to get you comfortable with 3D essentials so you can feel confident heading into the advanced projects later on in the course. No lettering experience is necessary – I share my trick for using existing typefaces if that’s something you’d prefer 😉 The course also comes with ALL of the original Procreate files from the videos, so you’ll have them as reference if you ever need them. Today I’m sharing the course trailer plus additional details, below!
One of my favorite typography books is Shadow Type by Steven Heller + Louise Fili. I’ve broken the hardcover spine with all of the times I’ve paged through, sticky noted the tops of others and left it flat open, absorbing as much as possible. What’s most impressive is the consistency and creativity with all of that 3D type, perfectly executed by hand. I’m constantly reminded of how lucky we are to have a program like Adobe Illustrator, making things in seconds that once took hours. One shadow type project I’ve been working to perfect is dimensional signage typography. I love how the typography looks 3D and oftentimes has a long shadow, extending in the opposite direction. In this week’s tutorial, I’m sharing my method of creating that signage typography look using Illustrator!
Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial comes courtesy of Brittany, who shared this photo with me, which I agreed would make a great quick tip tutorial! As a bonus, I’m sharing how to create multi-colored long shadow typography, in case you’d like to use more than one color for your shadows 🙂 We’ll create every version quickly in Illustrator using one simple tool and a couple of extra time saving options. This is perfect for gig posters, MTV-esque retro designs, greeting cards, or paired with simple icons. Read on to see it all!
A while back, I shared how to create dimensional typography in Illustrator, which is perfect for artwork that needs to be rescaled to different dimensions. But what if you already know the biggest your type needs to be seen at and you’d like to use Photoshop instead? In this week’s tutorial, I share how to create that dimensional typography quickly and easily in Photoshop using the rectangular marquee + pen tool to create selections and a soft brush to create those dimensional shadows. And! Since it’s Thanksgiving month and all, we’ll finish everything off with a small fall detail 🍃 😉Feel free to use these ideas for Thanksgiving invitations or greeting cards! Let’s get started!
It’s time for another Text Drive post! (I can’t believe the last one was in June!) I mentioned a couple weeks ago about being gifted this amazing book on shadow typography and thought that would be a great topic for a text drive post. Shadow type is best used as a headline with simpler, supporting fonts for your main body copy. Because it has so much character, long sentences can become difficult to read, while short headlines make perfect use of each detail and call attention immediately to what’s being discussed. As with all text drive posts, below you’ll find two fonts in a similar genre (shadow type) – one for free (Nexa Rust) and one for a fee (Eveleth) – read on to see what I love about each one and which fonts I’d pair them with!
Welcome to Part 2 of how to create 3D typography from scratch! In this final video, we take everything we created in Part 1 using Illustrator and bring it into Photoshop. Using Photoshop, we’ll add custom shadows and texturize those shadows to add extra visual interest and dimension. At the end of this video, you’ll have your own custom, print ready 3D typography you can use for social media profiles, posters, prints and monogrammed stationery. Let’s get started!
Happy Tuesday! First of all, I have to tell you that I’ve been completely overwhelmed by all of the kind comments from last Friday’s post. My heart is bursting with gratitude. Thank you so very much for making this past weekend one I’ll never forget!
My co-workers gifted Spencer and I this amazing typography book as a going away gift last week and I have a serious problem with putting it down! There’s something that completely pulls you in when you lay eyes on the shadow type in the book – each layer so carefully planned, highlights and shadows in perfect contrast with one another along each angle and curve. Handmade type back in the day was so killer. I’m jealous of those craftsmen and craftswomen type masterminds. Of course, I couldn’t help myself with creating my own, digital form, inspired by pages from the book. In this week’s tutorial, we’ll create our own multi-layered 3D typography from scratch in Illustrator. In part 2 next week, we’ll bring that typography into Photoshop to add texture and enhance highlights + shadows to complete our type. Let’s gets started!
Happy Tuesday! I thought I’d add a more advanced tutorial to the mix since we’ve really laid all the foundation in earlier tutorials. Plus, this one’s really fun and with just a few quick steps, you end up with a pretty cool outcome. In this week’s video, we’ll add vector dimension to typography by taking some hand lettering created with the Wacom tablet (like in this or this tutorial), and we’ll add vector gradients to simulate shadows to bring in that vector dimension. The end result is a 3d looking piece of your own typography, plus you can use the same technique for any kind of artwork, not just typography – think logos, patterns, icons and illustrations! Let’s get started!
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