It is incredibly rare to come across a lettering class or course that teaches you how to create professional level lettering, but Jon Contino’s class offers just that. Jon is an immensely skilled lettering artist and illustrator. His work has been commissioned by some very notable brands and companies including Nike, Microsoft and Coka Cola. Jon’s lettering and illustration work was also showcased in one of my all time favourite films The Book of Life, and in much of the marketing that went with it. Jon has been featured on Lettering Tutorial in the past as part of the ‘Lettering Legend’ series. I recommend you read his really inspiring interview if you haven’t already, to discover more about his amazing skills and accomplishments.
I had a quick conversation with Jon to find out about his class, so I could highlight the best features for you. Jon has created some Skillshare classes and he has plenty of in-person teaching experience too. With this new class he wants to teach in greater depth and make the experience much more personal than third party platforms generally allow for, so he has created his own platform the Contino Workshop.
Custom Lettering Class Highlights
I’ll begin by highlighting some of the things that make Jon’s class stand out from others. Firstly Jon’s class will have a dedicated Slack channel. If you’re not familiar with Slack it’s a really useful chat application which often gets used in workplaces. It allows for easy group communication, collaboration, image uploading and more. It has a pretty intuitive search feature along with mobile and desktop apps too so you don’t need to worry about missing notifications. Can you tell I use Slack for some of the work that I do! The Slack channel will be the perfect environment for sharing and commenting on work, helping others, and having one on one critiques with Jon himself.
The class will consist of 37 lectures including videos and comes with a PDF workbook too, making it fun and simple to follow along with the online lectures. The class will be split up over six weeks and a bonus seventh week is on the agenda too. All lectures and videos will still be available after the six weeks are over, but critiques and conversations with Jon will finish when the bonus week comes to an end. Setting a schedule for the course is a great way of encouraging you to get the most out of it, and Jon is very confident that during those six weeks you will go from a lettering novice to a lettering pro. How amazing is that!
Jon’s bonus week is a fantastic addition to the class. At the end of the six weeks, he’s hosting a live video session. During the session you can ask him anything about lettering, get on the spot critiques and enquire about lettering and business too.
Upon completion of the class you get a cool lapel pin which has been designed by Jon, and is a great way of showing you’ve put the work in!
What You’ll Learn
After all of that I bet you’re really excited to know what the class actually covers and what beneficial things you will learn. The following is just a summary, the Contino Workshop website goes into a lot more detail.
· The history of written language and its development.
· Important fonts and how to recreate them.
· How to construct and describe your work from a professional perspective.
· Customising letters on a computer or customising them by hand.
· Creating unique and interesting lettering.
· The difference between script and calligraphy.
· Using rhythm, spacing and style.
· How to construct a logo using custom lettering.
· The do’s and do not’s of lettering.
Enrolling
The class is an incredible price of $350 which I personally think is worth every cent / penny because of the value it offers, and because of the value that you will get from it. You can register for the class until May 1st 2017 and then registration closes and the class begins.
Register for The Complete Guide to Custom Lettering Class
If you are serious about progressing and developing your lettering skills, and / or want to go from a beginner to a pro then you should get a huge amount out of this class and I highly recommend you register now whilst registration is still available! As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, classes that go into as much depth as Jon’s which also include the opportunity for critiquing, asking questions and getting feedback directly from the artist are rare. So this is not an opportunity to be missed!
