LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING
I am truly so flattered by the response to Lettering Layouts this week (it’s the #1 trending class on Skillshare as I type this!). I have loved, LOVED seeing everyone’s experiments they’ve shared either by tagging me on instagram or posting in the class. So much talent! To say a giant thank you, I wanted to share a little something extra to inspire any new layouts you may have up your sleeves: a hand lettering style inspiration guide!
Happy Tuesday! Today is one of my favorite kinds of Tuesdays, because I get to share a brand new class with you! I’m not going to lie, this class was a lot of work to prepare and record. There were 3 days where I was up until 5am putting every last detail in, so today, I’m breathing easier. 🙂 If you’ve followed along in past classes like Waterbrush Lettering Essentials and Bounce Lettering, you already have the perfect foundation for this one. Instead of a class focused on how to hand letter, this one is all about using your hand lettering.
This coming Monday, I’ll be publishing my next Skillshare class, Lettering Layouts. Since we went over typing on a path in Illustrator on Tuesday, I thought it’d be fun to mix the concept of custom baselines with purely typographic layouts. The results are pretty incredible and can for sure seem intimidating to try yourself. This week, on top of a roundup of 6 stunning typographic layouts, I’m breaking each layout down. By doing this, it’s far easier to see how each layout was achieved and how you can begin incorporating similar methods, techniques and design elements into your own layouts moving forward. If you’ll be joining me in Monday’s class, this post is a big head start. Read on for more!
Let’s talk about something that’s massively important, but often gets overlooked: type on a path in Illustrator. You’re probably already familiar with the ability to select any text and go effect > warp, but that makes editing your text later on pretty difficult. The truth is, most of graphic design is experimenting, altering and adjusting. Because of this, the need to go back and adjust previously warped text quickly is a big deal. Luckily, Illustrator makes it super easy to customize text appearance along a path with a few handy tools. Prepare to take your layouts to a whole new level with these options in this week’s tutorial! Oh, and just in case you need to reference these tips later, I made you a free cheat sheet, too 😉
There’s no doubt you’ve encountered it before: typography with a watercolor texture built in. A while back, I shared how to replicate this cool effect in Photoshop. Today, I want to share how easy it is to create watercolor typography in Illustrator using 3 different methods. If you saw last week’s tutorial, then you’ve already gotten a peek at one of them. 😉 But! If you don’t have a seamless watercolor pattern on hand, it’s still cake to create the same effect. I’ll even help you out by giving you a free texture from Watercolor Texture Kit Vol. 3 so you can follow along and start experimenting asap! Read on for everything you need to know to get started!
I’ve had a few requests on how to replicate the look of the incredible artwork by Eiko Ojala and I’m so excited to share my interpretation of it this week. This week’s tutorial is a little more advanced, but I have tutorials for every part I speed through and I’ve linked to all of them under the video if you’d like a more thorough explanation. This technique can be used for so many cool applications – logos, greeting cards, branding, web graphics, etc. We’ll start out in Illustrator creating our organic shapes and finish everything up in Photoshop, adding in shadows and textures to complete the layered letter look. See how it all comes together below!
I wanted to change things up a little this week and go super down to basics. The truth is, when it comes to learning, a lot of the times, I’m most inspired by just *watching* the thing happen. Seeing it take place, someone else’s process without all the nitty gritty little details along the way – just the ‘have-to-knows’ first. Maybe you’re like that too. On the chance you are when it comes to lettering, this week I want to go super simple and just share how I would do a basic lettered quote/phrase on the iPad – what I think about as I’m writing, what I’m paying attention to, and what I do to change course when maybe things aren’t going exactly how I like them. If this is something you’d like to see more of, let me know! I want to provide all I can on clearing up anything that might be holding you back 🙂 Full process below – and if you want to go further after this, my Intro to iPad Lettering course is located here. Let’s go!
What?! For real. Skillshare currently has a special that was too good not to tell you about. For anyone who is new to Skillshare and wants to try it out, you can get 3 months of full premium membership (membership typically costs ~$10/mo) for $0.99, which includes all of my Skillshare classes (there are currently 8), and all of my new ones coming in the next 3 months using this link. Pretty cool. If you’re looking to expand your skillset this summer – maybe take up waterbrush lettering or finally make that blog logo you’ve felt a little intimidated by, here’s your chance to do it all on the super cheap. Almost every class of mine comes with bonus freebies which you’ll get with enrollment too – cheat sheets, textures and resources links galore. Below is a little peek of just some of my recent classes and what others who have taken them had to say 😉
In my Intro to iPad Lettering class, we went through the entire library of brushes Procreate offers (which is amazing) and we also went over how to alter those same default brushes. If you’re looking for something less standard and more custom, Procreate allows you to create your own brushes from scratch, too! I love thinking up a doodle or a texture I haven’t seen in their library and being able to start using my own right away. In this week’s tutorial, I’ll share my full process on how to create custom Procreate brushes from scratch using Photoshop to perfect the design or texture and Procreate to apply brush settings. All the details below!
I experiment with new materials and supplies constantly for my (traditional) hand lettering. I would actually be scared to know how much time I’ve spent eyeing different hand lettering supplies (and reading their reviews) over on Amazon. I’ve invested in a lot of new ones this year and currently I have 5 favorites that I find myself always returning to and reordering. If you’re just starting out with lettering, or if you’re on the hunt for some new supplies but would like to read a real (almost every day) user review, here are my current top 5 favorite hand lettering supplies (totally unbiased, with no affiliation to any of em) 🙂
Ok, you guys. This one’s a game changer for real. No kidding, my workflow for editing vectors in Illustrator has been at least cut in half by now using my iPad with the app AstroPad. If you’ve seen this tutorial, or this one using the standard method of Wacom/mouse for edits/revisions, you’re going to love this one. You can also find a list of my top 5 affordable Wacom tablets here if you are interested in using that type of device. If you’ve checked our my Intro to iPad Lettering class, this will take things even further if you’re familiar with Illustrator – you can use this same method with Photoshop, but I find myself using it wayyyy more with Illustrator, so I’m focusing this video there. I spent some serious edit time on this so you could get the full effect of what’s happening on my computer vs. how I’m using the iPad – I walk you through basic edits of a design element and then show you how I used the iPad when I worked on my most recent font, Hawthorne Script. I’m not affiliated with AstroPad in any way, just really excited about how much time I’m about to get back in the future 🙂 See it all below!
I am beyond thrilled to introduce my newest font today, Hawthorne Script! A lot of love and many, manyyyy hours went into this baby and I couldn’t be happier with how it came out. I packed more into this font than any other before it so you can take it much further than a typical, standard font.
Along with the regular style, a second style is included that contains a full alternate lowercase – just highlight any regular letter and switch it to the ‘alternates’ style to create words that look even more original and handmade! 10 bonus swashes are included (5 left side, 5 right side) as well as 9 standard ligatures. I enjoyed creating this font so much that the language compatibility is a little off the charts: English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Bosnian, Albanian, Estonian, Catalan, Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Icelandic and Norwegian. Phew.
Font previewer below so you can take it for a spin, as well as some additional preview images!
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