Hand Lettering: Letterforms at Their Core

What You'll Be Creating

This tutorial will provide you with a very basic understanding not only of lettering, but also of overall concepts of typography, which a lot of designers these days don’t have. The process described below will teach you about consistency, kerning, contrast, and weight.

Since lettering is completely analog, we won’t need any computers for this tutorial! Put those things aside while we train your eyes to notice the subtleties and basics of typography.

Additionally, since this is a beginner class focused around lettering and typography, I will be using some terms some of you may not know. Here is a list of terms you may want to read up on if you're not sure what they are:

• Kerning
• Cap Height
• X-Height
• Baseline
• Negative Space
• Letterform Anatomy
• Contrast
• Crossbar

And here is a list of things to reference that may help you understand the topics I'm describing below:

• Roman Letterforms
• Greek Letterforms
• Uncial
• Rustica
• Trajan Column

One thing to note before we start: the process below isn't set in stone. It's verycustomizable to your needs and preferences. For example, the type of pencil you use doesn't need to be a 2B, but that's just my preference. You could use a 6B if you're wanting darker letterforms. Additionally, the way the letterforms are constructed isn't set in stone either. Obviously there's a "defined norm" but you can determine the way your curves interact with your strokes, the width of the letterforms and everything else in between. Make this about you! Use the information below as a starting point and branch off! 

Alright, let's get started!

1. Prepare the Tools You Will Need

• Drawing Pad 14” by 17”, preferably Strathmore brand
• Olfa Blade Utility Knife
• Sharpie or any black pen
• 2B Pencil
• C-Thru Sandpaper Pointer 
• Ruler
• Kneaded Eraser

All of the above tools should be available at your local art supply store. If you have a Dick Blick nearby, they should have everything you need!

Step 1

Let's get started! Remove 20+ pages from your drawing pad. Then, remove the perforated edges because we won’t need those. Place those clean perforation-free pages in a stack to prepare for the upcoming knowledge! (If you'd like, go ahead and prepare all the pages in your drawing pad, because you'll most likely be using them all.)

Step 2

First, with the Olfa Blade, shave off about the size of your thumbnail from the tip of the pencil. Point that blade away from you when doing this so you don’t hurt yourself!  

Next, we're going to use the sandpaper pointer. To do so, place the lead of the pencil on the tip of the sandpaper so it’s almost perpendicular with the table. You want a little bit of an angle so the lead can sharpen to a chisel shape. Take that pencil and move it up and down (away from and towards your chest) until one side is flat, then repeat on the opposite side so it looks like the above photo.

Step 3

We're going to be making a "guide" or "template" of sorts for you to use throughout this whole tutorial. Begin by taking one of those blank sheets of 14" by 17" paper and laying it flat in front of you. Let's start by measuring out 2" from each side and connecting the dots. Essentially, we're making a 2" border around the paper just like the above image.

Step 4

Continuing further, place your page in a landscape fashion. Then, begin to measure andmark a dot every .5" (half inch) from the top border to the bottom on the left side of the page. Then, do the same on the right side of the page. With dots on both sides of the page every half inch, you can now connect those by drawing a straight line across the page.  By the end, it'll look like the above photo.

How does this guide page work? Well, the very first line is called the "cap height", and the second line below would be where the crossbars of letters like "H", "E", and "F" sit. And lastly, the third line below is the baseline. Altogether that would be 1.5" since the distance between each line is .5".

2. Set Up the Workspace

Step 1

Alright, we're nearly ready to start. Clean off your desk with paper towels and some cleaner (Simple Green works great) or any kind of cleaning materials you like to use to make sure there are no crumbs, eraser shavings, etc., that will get in the way of the work you’re about to create. 

Step 2

Tape your guide paper horizontal to the table. Place the tape vertical right next to the corners, not across the corner, because that will rip your paper easier when the tape is removed.

Step 3

Next, tape your blank paper on top of your guide page. They should be stacked perfectly since they’re both the same size. Now, repeat Step 2 in terms of taping the corners.

Step 4

Once your paper is good to go, arrange your other materials in whatever fashion you’d like. Just make sure you have them all within close proximity for easy use. The above image is how I set mine up, so you’re more than welcome to use that setup as well. Once all of that is set up and to your liking, we’re finally ready to get practicing!

3. Lines, Symbols & Curves

Step 1

We’re going to start by drawing vertical lines, then move onward to drawing symbols and curves. Why are we just drawing lines you ask? This practice helps you train your eyes to notice consistency, weight, and spacing, and trains you to draw a straight line of course! To begin, hold the pencil so the chisel shape is at a 45-degree angle. Maintain that angle for every single line, symbol and curve from here on out.

Now, let’s begin drawing lines. Starting at the top left-hand border on your guide page, pull your pencil down (or begin from the bottom and go towards the top) from the very top line of your guide page (the cap height) to the second line underneath (the baseline). Essentially, your vertical lines should be two lines in height. You can see the setup in the pages below if that helps. To help you achieve a vertical line, make sure your entire body is center with the line you’re about to draw. You want to pull that line directly to the center of your chest. That will help you achieve a perfectly vertical line—after some practice of course! 

The above photo is what a finished page should look like. If you’d like an extra challenge, try to create a gradient of value with your pencil. To do so, apply more pressure when you start the line, ease it up at the center as you pull down, and finally, apply pressure again once you finish that same line. Now repeat that for every single line you draw and try to maintain consistency throughout. You can see what I mean by the photo above.

Step 2

The space between each line you draw is up to you. Just make sure it's the same throughout the page. You're striving for consistent, even spacing. Once you have a full page, remove that page and replace it with another blank, and repeat Step 1 over and over until you achieve perfectly vertical lines. As for getting them perfectly vertical, it’s going to take you a while. Like everything in life, it all takes practice! So, don’t get discouraged. After 20+ pages I began achieving perfect vertical lines. It will all come with time. This is something you could practice for 10–20 minutes every single day. You'll notice the progress you're making if you dedicate the time.

Step 3

Once you’ve nailed down those vertical lines, you can begin drawing symbols. These symbols will introduce horizontal and diagonal strokes for you to practice on top of the vertical strokes you've just learned.

Attempt things such as plus signs, check marks, an upside-down T, or whatever you can come up with that connects two or three strokes. Remember always to maintain the 45-degree angle of your pencil. That angle will inform the symbols such as the check mark. One stroke is thick, while the connecting stroke is thin.

Just as you did with the lines, practice and practice until you’ve achieved perfection. It will take time! Feel free to use the above image as a guide. Depending on which symbol you draw, the following symbol will need to be spaced or “kerned” correctly to maintain even negative space surrounding each symbol. Always be aware of which symbol you previously drew and think about which symbol you plan to draw next. That will help you kern your symbols. You want your page to feel even, meaning that you want the positive and negative space to be equal.

Step 4

Now, the curves/circles are a bit tricky. They just take a bit of practice, that's all. It’s similar to lines in the sense that you will have to maintain consistency and spacing. As for starting the circle it’s going to require two strokes. In the above photo, the grey lines represent your cap height and baseline. You can see the curve extends beyond both these lines. As for the red lines, those depict where your pencil starts.

Hold that pencil at a 45-degree angle and begin the start of the curve just a tad below the cap height (where the first red line is) and finishing at the lower right. And to finish, do the same motion in the opposite direction, never changing the angle of your pencil! Essentially, the circle is cut in half at a 45-degree angle as well. It’s going to be difficult your first couple of tries. It just takes some getting used to.

Step 5

Repeat Step 4 until you have a completed page of circles! If you're not ready to draw a full circle, fill some pages with half-circles (just one stroke instead of two).  If you’re not happy with the curves you’ve drawn or want more practice, throw another sheet on that guide page and go to town!

4. Roman Letterforms

Step 1

Like your previous tasks, just begin practicing! Place another blank sheet on your guide page and begin writing any and all letterforms your heart desires. Don't worry about making your letterforms look identical to the photo above. You'll learn and understand the basic structure as you practice. Always remember that 45-degree angleand let the pencil inform your stroke weight.

One piece of information you'll need to know: Letterforms with a curve such as "O", "Q", "C", and "S" need to extend just a tad above and below the cap height and baseline. The reason is that curved letterforms appear to be smaller when sitting next to a vertical stroke such as an "H". So, to compensate for the tricks our eyes play on us, you need to extend those curves above and below the cap height and baseline. Just have a look at the first image above, and you'll see what I mean.

Step 2

You may use the above photo for a combination of letters to begin writing. This combination of letterforms isn’t required, but definitely recommended, as it will train your eye to kern properly. There are a lot of kerning pairs used above that you will run into when drawing letterforms. Using your previous knowledge learned, apply those vertical, horizontal, diagonal and curved lines to compose your Roman letterforms!

5. Greek Letterforms

Step 1

Just as you did with Roman letterforms, begin practicing the same forms. The only difference between Roman and Greek is a few additional characters and different appearances for a few letterforms. Additional characters include the theta, xi, delta, sigma, and a few others. Feel free to practice other characters I haven't included in the above photo!

Take into consideration the same process and knowledge you've learned with Roman letterforms. Curves extend above and below the baseline, while vertical strokes meet those lines without extending beyond. 

Step 2

Repeat Step 1 until you've filled a few pages. After finishing multiple pages, you will most likely have a pretty darn great eye for all the things taught in this tutorial: consistency, weight, kerning, contrast, and various basic typographic terms!

6. Bonus Material!

Feel like you want to take on more? I’ve attached some sheets of Rustica and Uncial letterforms to carry your knowledge further. Use the same paper, pencils, etc., and just approach these as you would any other letterforms.

Conclusion

Practice, practice, practice. You want to be as good as some of the greats? People like Jessica Hische, Tony DiSpigna and Doyald Young all started where you are right now. With some dedication, determination, and drive to better yourself and your drawing abilities, you’ll be a pro in no time.

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The 8 biggest typography mistakes designers make

Type might look simple, but it’s still possible to get it very wrong. Here are 8 common pitfalls to avoid.

The art of typography at first looks really straightforward: choose a typeface, fiddle with the size and perhaps alter the colour. The truth is that there's so much more to effective typesetting than that.
Typography is an almost invisible art form; if successful, the care and attention put into setting type on a page will melt away effortlessly, leaving the content front and foremost in the eye of the reader. As a discipline it's really an act of facilitation - that is to say that it exists to help make the words and meaning the focus, providing a platform for it to shine through.
In other words, typography has to achieve a lot without all the bells, whistles and applause. So it's hardly surprising that it's often misunderstood and abused by designers who haven't been trained specifically in how to handle and set type. Here we've listed some of the biggest mistakes designers make when it comes to type, and how to avoid them in your own work...

01. Insufficient leading

If leading is too tight, it makes the copy appear bunched up

Leading is the space between two lines of type, and is named after the strips of lead used in original metal type press to ensure an adequate gap between the lines. In word processing software such as Microsoft Word, and on the web, it's referred to as line-spacing.
Put simply, too little line-spacing makes the copy feel bunched up and hard to read. Similarly too much leads to a feeling of disconnection between the lines of type.
There's no absolute hard-and-fast rule to choosing the right amount of leading, but an aesthetic judgement can be made based on how legible the text itself is.

02. Too much positive tracking

Too much tracking can reduce readability

Tracking refers to the space between letters across an entire word or phrase. The greater the tracking, the more the characters that form a word will have space to either side.
Designers commonly use tracking to adjust type so that it fits a particular line length perfectly, and while small adjustments are okay in these circumstances, adding too much tracking can reduce the legibility and readability of the copy.
In general terms, leaving tracking (referred to as letter-spacing on the web) at the default value will provide the best legibility for a specific font. If you're using a font as a headline or display face, it's not uncommon to reduce the tracking to a value of up to -20 in order to make it appear heavier and more like a headline than it would untouched.

03. Confusing tracking and kerning

Tracking and kerning are similar but not the same

Designers can spend hours poring over the tracking and kerning of their typography. It's important, however, to understand that the two things are not synonymous.
Tracking, as we've already mentioned above, deals with the spacing between characters across an entire word or phrase. Kerning is an adjustment of the specific space between two characters in particular. Kerning is often used to bring characters that naturally have a lot of white space around them closer to their neighbours.
A good example is the combination of the letterforms W and A, which can sit closer together than most fonts will naturally place them, due to the complementary angles that make up their shapes.

04. Using too many faces and weights

Too many fonts can make your copy appear cluttered and confusing

One of the biggest mistakes made by designers, especially those new to the discipline, is a tendency to use too many fonts and weights in a design. As a general principle, it's best practice to limit a piece of work to containing a maximum of three different fonts.
Of course there are occasions where you'll need many more than three, but by introducing too many typefaces you'll unsettle the reader, and make the design feel disjointed.

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This effect can also be felt when using to many different weights within a specific font, although using the same font with different weights is a little more forgivable.

05. Failing to set reasonable line lengths

Print titles normally limit their content's lines to a maximum of 75 characters

This is another legibility issue that many designers fall foul of: excessive line lengths make it difficult for a reader to find their place on the next line, and can hamper understanding.
In general it's worth taking a cue from newspapers and magazines, limiting your content's lines to a maximum of 75 characters. Of course there are times when this simply isn't possible, but if your content wraps to more than a couple of lines, you should make every effort to restrict the line length.

06. Inadequate contrast

Insufficient contrast can make text difficult to read

As with many of the possibilities that modern software provides, just because you can do something, it doesn't mean that you should! One such example is where copy is rendered with insufficient contrast against its background, leading to difficulties reading and understanding the text.
This can either be because the type is set using a colour that's too tonally similar to the background colour, or because it's placed on top of a tinted semi-transparent background that sits above an image.
Either way, this mistake is easily avoided by scrunching up your eyes and checking that you can still make out the characters of your type (as this reduces your colour perception and makes it easier to discern the underlying tonality of different colours).

07. Centering text universally

Only ever centre text if you have a good reason for doing so

One of the first things you'll often hear a designer say is that you should never centre text.
We don't fully agree with that sentiment; there's definitely a time and place for centred text, and used wisely it can enhance a design significantly. However, novice designers often centre all their text in an attempt to create a sense of balance in their design. This is a critical error as the symmetry is both unsettling and difficult to read - especially in longer passages of text.
Avoid centring text universally, and embrace the asymmetry of a design which features ragged lines, or use justified text where you need a solid block of copy.

08. Two spaces after a full stop

The double-space after punctuation is an outdated convention

In truth this isn't typically the fault of the designer, but it's worth highlighting simply because so many of these creep through into production. The double-space after a full stop (aka period or full point) is a hangover from the days of typewriters, and was (apparently) necessary to avoid placing the next character too close to the stop.
Modern word processing software, desktop publishing tools, and web browsers all take this into account and can happily render type correctly without the need for this vestige of a bygone era. Let your copywriters know!
Have you spotted any crimes against typography that we haven't covered above? Let us know in the comments below!

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What if your favourite fonts had offspring?

If pairs of great fonts reproduced, their babies would look something like this typeface mash-up.

What will your favourite fonts look like once they're combined?

As a creative, you'll often have a favourite font or two that are your go-to choices when it comes to designing your latest project. Typographers often take inspiration from previous offerings and this series from Paris based designer Mr Crosmo sees fonts such as Garamond, Baskerville and Din combine into one single typeface.
"The idea I tried to work with was, what would happen if reproduction between letters from different families was possible?" he explains. Sketching out the key aspects from each font, typefaces such as 'Bodini' and 'Avant-Garamont' were born that you'll either love or hate.
Whether these will go on to become the new favourite fonts in town remains a mystery but it's a fun little project that will enable you to see your old favourites in a whole new light. Take a look at The Original Mixtype offerings below.

Visit The Original Mixtype Behance page to see the more images.
What do you think of the reproduced types? Let us know in the comments box below!

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The 10 commandments of typography

Picking a font for your latest project is a difficult task. Follow these 10 commandments for success!

Click the image to see the full size infographic

There are a few typography rules and terms that every designer must know but before you master the skill of choosing and designing that perfect font, you can find yourself a little lost. This infographic from Evan Brown at DesignMantic aims to save you those long scrolling hours and instead offer up some simple type-based commandments.
"Even though typography is an art and art is supposed to be subjective with minimal parameters, these rules can still be applied in order to save time and too much experimentation," he explains. "It's always good to know the few basic do’s and don’ts in order to save yourself the trouble of experimenting too many fonts on your design."
So whether you're a typography pro or a design newbie, this infographic is well worth checking out. You might learn something new to help ease those font-based woes and instead, help you to get on with your work.
Do you agree with the 10 Commandments of Typography? Let us know in the comments box below!

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