As a graphic and editorial designer I've always had a thing for letters, fonts and type. And as an illustrator I love to work with them as well. Drawing letter forms makes you really look at them as shapes and not so much as characters. It gives you the opportunity to play around with them and make them interact in a way they could not do as a type.
Hand lettering is very popular right now and it's hard to miss these days. I've been getting more into lettering myself. I took a calligraphy class (which is not the same as hand lettering, but it is related of course) and I have been taking online courses in hand lettering. Practice, practice, practice.
The popularity comes from the renewed love for creating things, handmade things in a world that is becoming more and more digital and fast. It's nice to slow things down and really pay attention to what we have in front of us. To make, but also to see. Having something handmade feels like a luxury. It's something that is made with care and passion and is almost always unique.
One of the classes I took in hand lettering resulted in the quote poster below. The class was about drawing a word in your own letters, in different phases. Then vectorizing them in Illustrator and play around with color to make a postcard.
I decided to challenge myself a bit more and I used a quote to make a poster. Also I didn't want it looking too slick, so I decided not to verctorize, but keep the wobbly shapes of my hand drawn letters. So I used Photoshop instead of Illustrator (even though I should probably do it in Illustrator next time, just to get to know the software better).
So what I did after deciding on the quote was determine what words I wanted to emphasize.
In this case it was YOU and STRENGTH. To balance it out I made NOBODY big as well.
I roughly sketched in the letters, making sure to center everything. There should have been a version before this, but I decided to get more into detail on the same piece of paper. You see I've been erasing and shifting things.
I took a fresh sheet of paper and used my lightbox to trace what I liked about the last one. You see I changed some embellishing, added serifs at STRENGTH and generally cleaned it all up a bit.
Even though the pencil sketch above (2) wasn't exactly right yet, I decided to start inking it anyway, knowing I could change some things around on the computer. The G in STRENGTH is too thick and the bottom of these letters don't align very well. There is some weird thickness in the B and the D of NOBODY and the O looks more like an egg. The AND in the center is too high and a little small. Well. Hallelujah for Photoshop.
I cleaned up the letters, added some depth by using drop shadows. Again, I added and removed some of the embellishments, played around with the colors and voila!
Hand lettering is very popular right now and it's hard to miss these days. I've been getting more into lettering myself. I took a calligraphy class (which is not the same as hand lettering, but it is related of course) and I have been taking online courses in hand lettering. Practice, practice, practice.
The popularity comes from the renewed love for creating things, handmade things in a world that is becoming more and more digital and fast. It's nice to slow things down and really pay attention to what we have in front of us. To make, but also to see. Having something handmade feels like a luxury. It's something that is made with care and passion and is almost always unique.
One of the classes I took in hand lettering resulted in the quote poster below. The class was about drawing a word in your own letters, in different phases. Then vectorizing them in Illustrator and play around with color to make a postcard.
I decided to challenge myself a bit more and I used a quote to make a poster. Also I didn't want it looking too slick, so I decided not to verctorize, but keep the wobbly shapes of my hand drawn letters. So I used Photoshop instead of Illustrator (even though I should probably do it in Illustrator next time, just to get to know the software better).
So what I did after deciding on the quote was determine what words I wanted to emphasize.
In this case it was YOU and STRENGTH. To balance it out I made NOBODY big as well.
I roughly sketched in the letters, making sure to center everything. There should have been a version before this, but I decided to get more into detail on the same piece of paper. You see I've been erasing and shifting things.
I took a fresh sheet of paper and used my lightbox to trace what I liked about the last one. You see I changed some embellishing, added serifs at STRENGTH and generally cleaned it all up a bit.
I cleaned up the letters, added some depth by using drop shadows. Again, I added and removed some of the embellishments, played around with the colors and voila!
No comments:
Post a Comment