Creating Lettering and Beyond and The Hand Lettering Ledger are two books I purchased on Amazon to get started on learning this fabulous art form.
So, hand lettering has been a trend for a while now, and I’ve been an admirer for several years. I finally decided this year to stop admiring something I love so deeply and try my hand (no pun intended) at it. I’m obsessed with typography and spend more time learning about that than any other aspect of graphic design. And, although I’m not an artist, I think I could do well with lettering.
One of the perks of lettering is that it can be imperfect. Granted there are perfect letterers out there like Sean McCabe and Jessica Hische, but overall, it’s a bit homespun so you can get away with slight imperfections. I take this as my get out jail free card to have some wobbly lines in the start. Besides, once you vectorize it on the computer, you can make it perfect, right?
I’m starting with two books I bought on Amazon, “The Hand Lettering Ledger” by Mary Kate McDevitt and “Creative Lettering and Beyond” by Gabri Kirkendall, Laura Lavender, Julie Manwaring and Shawna Lynn Panczyszyn. Both seem really good so far in that they include lessons and practice pages within the books. However, the Hand Lettering Ledger seems like the best place to start to learn the different styles and letterforms whereas Creative Lettering would be a good continuation book. It includes a lot of fun craft projects where you can implement your newly acquired skills as well.
Trying out the “Serif” title and my spin on the “Surf’s Up” drawing. On the latter, I was just trying to copy the letterform shapes and not mess with trying to get the perspective right like she had it.
Right now, I started simply with copying some of the executions on the Lesson 1: Serifs pages. This isn’t the actual lesson for that section, just creative ways she does serif lettering. I am freehanding them, so they’re definitely rough around the edges and my notebook is small so squeezing things in at the right scale is a bit of a challenge. Hence, why “blue jeans” lost the “S” in my rendition. But it’s giving me good practice to see how the letterforms are created and fit together. I have some tracing paper that I’m going to use as well so that I can really get a feel for the more exact formations of the letters.
Whether I get good enough at lettering to ever market it as a skill or not, I thoroughly enjoy it and find it to be a great, creative exercise away from the screen.
Stay tuned as the adventure continues…
Blue Jeans became Blue Jean as my notebook is quite tiny, and I’m not good at gauging the spacial relations of the letters yet.
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