LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING
When you’re just getting started with hand lettering, figuring out the lettering styles you’d like to create and keeping them consistent can feel overwhelming. There are so many possibilities!
This week, I’m sharing some simple rules to follow to give you limitless options and we’ll tackle 10 easy script lettering styles you can start using today. Read on for how to make them and pick up a free cheat sheet, so you always have them handy!
If you use Procreate for hand lettering, you’ve likely experienced the struggle of finding just the right brush for your needs. It can be an overwhelmingly time consuming task testing brushes and readjusting them only to try the next one, hoping for the best.
While nearly any brush in Procreate can be used for lettering, not all are designed specifically for it. Today I’m sharing the specific settings to look for in a lettering brush, a list of my favorite free and premium hand lettering brushes as well as some free practice sheets, too! Read on to get it all!
Welcome to episode 4 of Style Studies! Style Studies is my monthly series where I walk you through a popular hand lettering style and provide free printable and Procreate practice sheets so you can follow along! This month, we’re diving into decorative serif lettering in 4 easy steps with a style I’m calling Party Slab. This style is a heavy slab serif, that lends itself well to extra decoration, like inline details and creative shadows. It’s best used in headlines, set in all caps and has a festive and fun feeling. Read on to grab the practice sheets and create it yourself!
Welcome to Episode 3 of Style Studies! This month, we’re finishing the foundations portion of this series so you’ll be prepared for all of the more decorative + modern styles coming next year! Getting a solid understanding of basic serif and sans serif styles will be something you can always rely on in design layouts in the future. I can’t emphasize enough how much I’ve used what I’m sharing in this episode throughout my career. They may not be the sexiest styles, but they’re the most reliable ones you’ll ever use. As with every episode, printable and Procreate practice sheets are included for free, below. So let’s jump in to how to create serif + sans serif lettering the right way!
Welcome to episode no.2 of my new monthly series, Hand Lettering Style Studies! If you missed episode 1, you can catch it here 😉 This week, we’re talking about the simple script lettering style. This one is really important if you plan to create any variation of script lettering in the future. You’ll learn all of the basics: how each script character is formed, the order of the strokes and how to keep the style consistent. Refer to the style overview for the best applications to use this style on, too! Grab the free printable and Procreate practice sheets below to follow along!
Many of you know I teach a course on converting your hand lettering into a professional, sellable font. But what if you’re new to lettering and want to create a font? In this new monthly series, called Hand Lettering Style Studies, I will guide you through all the steps to create modern lettering styles that are on trend, with practice sheets included! Each month, a new video will be released plus *free* practice guides. If there’s a style you’d like to see in a future video, please leave it in the comments section! First up for this month: every hand lettering stroke you’ll ever need! Read on for the video + free practice sheets!
In my course, Learn Font Making, I take you through all the steps to prepare your lettering for font making, convert it into a working, professional font and I share my best tips for selling your font, too. I’m often asked by students is if I think the market is too saturated for new font makers. Although converting your lettering into a sellable font *is* a process, the fact the font making market is booming right now should not hold you back from starting; it should actually do the opposite. In this week’s video, I share my perspective about the saturation of the font market. I also share tips to stand apart from the crowd to get your fonts noticed by those buyers. Read on for it all!
Many of you likely know I teach a comprehensive course on creating and selling hand lettered fonts (check it out here!). The course reopens next week for the last time this year, so if you plan to get started, I thought some lettering supply recommendations were in order!
There are 2 ways you can create your initial lettering for converting into a font: digitally or analog. If you choose the digital route, I recommend using Procreate on an iPad with pressure sensitivity since there are amazing brush options for different looks. This post is all about the analog, though – as much as I love the iPad, there’s still something about lettering supplies on paper (not to mention the much lower price point!). Read on for my favorite lettering supplies for font making, analog-style 😉
If you love lettering – whether it’s on paper or an iPad, you’re probably familiar with how powerful your lettering becomes when it’s vectorized. Vectorization allows your lettering to be infinitely rescaled without losing quality. This means it can be put on anything, at any size and look as great as the day it was drawn. Since it’s a digital copy, it can exist for forever without fear of it being buried in past stacks of lettering experiments, too. It’s also a crucial step in creating open type fonts!
In this week’s video, I’m sharing my favorite, most reliable Illustrator trace settings when it comes to vectorizing lettering. These are the settings I use every time I vectorize to keep as much original quality as possible. Read on for it all!
As designers today, we are extra gifted with the ability to make passive income from digital products. While ‘passive’ can be a bit misleading (because there is continual work to maintain and build on your product offering), to a large extent, it allows designers to experiment + create more without the continual pressure of seeking new freelance work. So what do I mean by passive income? Creating digital products (like templates, fonts, textures, etc.) once and selling them over and over again without additional work. Create it once, sell it forever. And with digital products, there are many options with where and how to sell that makes the entire process automated once the product is made.
In this week’s video, I’ll walk through those selling options and the how making passive income off of my fonts has changed my creative future.
My newest font, Skinny Jeans, just went live this week! I’ve been making a point to share process info for the fonts I make (here’s Espresso Roast), so that’s what this week is all about 🙂 Skinny Jeans is a font trio that includes the main script style, a caps style that pairs perfectly and a symbols font to add extra personality to layouts. The hand drawn + illustrated symbols also come as a vector file to make things quicker for those who work in Illustrator. This font is by far the most in depth of all I’ve created; it contains 30+ ligatures, alternates and extra features. In the video below, you’ll see what raw materials I used to initially hand letter the font, then the steps I took to make it a fully functioning font. Read on to see everything!
Ever dreamed of creating your own hand lettered font? Actually typing with *your* letterforms? I promise there are fewer better feelings when it comes to loving lettering than that 😉 But where do you even begin? How do you create those initial letters so you can convert them into a font? While the topic of how to prepare your lettering for font making is covered extensively in my course, Learn Font Making, I wanted to share a bit of my process in this week’s tutorial. In this video, we’ll talk about how to prepare lettering traditionally (writing utensil + paper) so you get all the characters you need for your font. If you’d prefer to prepare lettering on an iPad instead, that’s covered specifically inside the course. For now, read on for the traditional method!
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