Creative Market have recently shared an article on their blog all about hand lettering for beginners by C.S. Jones. The article gives a great simplistic guide on some of the materials used within lettering. It also talks about basic steps you can follow to start lettering.
Some of the information within the article I have previously talked about on Lettering Tutorial, such as what exactly is hand lettering, and using pencils. However, there are definitely a couple of things in the article I have yet to cover that I do have in the pipeline. I wanted to share Creative Markets article with you though, as it’s a good one at getting you started with lettering if you haven’t already but pencil to paper.
The article highlights the following steps for lettering:
Steps in the Process
In short:
- You pick out the fonts you’d like to use (or sketching out your own beforehand)
- You measure and block out your piece so that your letters are all spaced as you like
- You hand-ink your piece or scan it, then finish in a vector program
There is definitely nothing wrong with following these steps if you are a hand lettering beginner. They’re perfect for breaking down the lettering process in a non scary way. If you talk to the more experienced letterer though, I’m sure most will tell you that the process they follow includes a couple more steps. So I wouldn’t stick to this as a definitive guide for the rest of your lettering career. The simple steps are certainly all you need to focus on as a hand lettering beginner, and you can add more steps into your working process along your lettering journey!
The article doesn’t include a guide on how to vectorise your hand lettering once it’s inked, but that’s the only thing really that it doesn’t at least briefly cover. Mind you, there is quite a lot involved with the vectoring process and it could be overwhelming if combined with the information in the article.
Well done Creative Market, a really useful article!
