How to create a Hand Lettering design in Adobe Illustrator
Part 1: Creating the basic layout
This is the first part in a series of tutorials that we will be featuring, which will show you how to manipulate a font in Adobe Illustrator to create a simple, hand lettering design effect. In later tutorials, we will use this basic hand lettering design to apply some additional effects.
Step 1: The first thing you will want to do is download or create a good font that will give you a start to work with for the hand lettering style. For this tutorial, I used a font called “Alex Brush”, which can be downloaded at: Fontsquirrel.com
Step 2: Type out the message you want to use and take a good look at the words and envision how they will come together in the final product. It will be easier to work with if you separate out each word as you are placing on your art board (don’t type the whole phrase out inside of one text box).
Step 3: I am going to start by expanding my text so I can begin working with the individual letters. With your text selected, go to Type > Create Outlines.
Step 4: The first thing I am going to do is line up my two words so that they are offset from each other a little bit.
Step 5: To help the letters meld into each other a little better, I am going to enlarge and offset the Capital letters for each word so they do not share the baseline with the rest of the letters.
Step 6: Now that the text is a little closer together you will want to look for areas that you can fill in with some flourishes. You will also want to remove any overlapping areas that just don’t look right. For example: the curl on the back of the L doesn’t line up, so we are going to remove it.
Step 6a: The best way to remove the parts of the letter that you don’t want is to use the Direct Selection Tool (A) and select the points you want to get rid of. If you are selecting multiple points, hold down the Shift key as you click to select more than one at a time.
Step 7: Now we are going to add in some flourishes. Using the pen or pencil tool, start by adding some lines that will connect your words together more. For this example, I am using a 5pt stroke with a basic brush set to use the Variable Width Profile 2. You can see the new lines I have added in red.
Step 8: Continue adding more flourishes until you are happy with the design. You can see the new lines I created in red.
Step 9: With all of your lettering and flourishes together, you will want to look at the connections and clean up any areas that need to line up. The best way to do this is to use the Direct Selection Tool (A) and move the points so that the line up better.
Step 10: In the case of my “g” I will need to use the knife tool to slice off the slight tail that doesn’t fit into the flourish.
Step 11: I am going to use the line that extends from the “g” as a guide for my subtext. You will make a copy of this stroke (ctrl + C) and paste in front (ctrl + F). After you have pasted the copy of the stroke, you will lower the line down a little and use the “Type on a Path” tool.
Step 12: Click anywhere on the path and type out your message. If you are having trouble using the Type on a Path tool, visit THIS ARTICLE from Adobe
Step 13: Now, our basic design layout is done. In the next few weeks, we are going to explore some additional effects that you can apply to this basic text layout.
