While I have been interested and passionate about letters for some time, my experience in the digital design industry had me hesitate to break that realm and spend time on learning anything but that. I have experience using type and typography principles in many graphic designs, and marvel at the fonts I choose from to do these. But, you can only ignore your passion for so long until you make the time to be able to practice it yourself, and so far (although I have a lot of practice to do) I'm loving it and it feels so right to spend my time this way. I learned this week that lettering and typeface/system creation (where the deliverable is a font) are way different than one another. Although that seems obvious I never put it into words until I heard it that way and it helped me focus on the future projects I might produce using one-time (or few time) use lettering techniques - way different than the typefaces I work with on the web. Feels like a fresh change for side work that will pair well with many wedding themed projects which I love working on!
Right now, I am working on practice in the Skillshare class called The First Steps of Hand-Lettering: Concept to Sketch (Lettering I) by Mary Kate McDevitt. I began my project and am now learning the basics of lettering which is not the same as just the anatomy of letters that you learn in basic type class (serifs, x-height, ligature, counter, etc) but more like the steps used to produce certain styles. One hurdle I am already noticing is the tendency to start out every word with my normal cursive-print handwriting. Seeing the visuals that Mary Kate is using to show steps and style types is SO helpful, along with the notes and materials following each lesson that I am able to reference as I go.
<img src="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/556903d0e4b03db784306ad2/5576d175e4b0786822c974a3/5582fd33e4b06d2f278ed12e/1434647860743/lettering-styles-practice.png" alt="Practice with lettering styles and principles."/>
I have pulled together my quote I will be drawing, and inspiration into a mood board. The next step will be for me to pick a word from my phrase and draw it in 5 different styles. For today, I focused on starting with some styles to illustrate the main principles Mary Kate pointed out as tips to keep in mind so it would reinforce those methods and point out my weaknesses. Nothing is close to as exciting looking or creative as the style examples she used for her step in the project but I feel I have a solid understanding now of where to go from here and how to practice creating styles I see better. That will be huge in moving forward with actual ideas for my project and a step that I felt I needed to overcome as a newbie. Feel free to follow along on Skillshare and share with me any of your projects! There are so many cool courses I see coming up that I can't wait to take.
<img src="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/556903d0e4b03db784306ad2/5576d175e4b0786822c974a3/5576e518e4b099e58036a664/1433855262449/getbusyliving_thumbnails.png" alt="Lettering Principles, First Time"/>
<img src="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/556903d0e4b03db784306ad2/5576d175e4b0786822c974a3/55859d0ae4b01c6611b5117a/1434819855499/getbusylivingorgetbusydying-sketch-composition.png" alt="Chosen composition in rough sketch. Clean up and fixing next."/>