An exciting book has just been introduced into the lettering world titled ‘The Joy of Lettering: A creative exploration of contemporary hand lettering, typography & illustrated typeface’. The book is authored and illustrated by lettering artists Gabri Joy Kirkendall and Jaclyn Escalera. Gabri Joy also co-authored one of my favourite books ‘Creative Lettering and Beyond’.
Gabri Joy runs a successful business specialising in hand lettering and illustration. She has developed skills using a range of mediums and has a very beautiful and recognisable style of lettering. Gabri Joy creates custom lettering, branding, prints, wedding stationary and more.
Jaclyn Escalera is based in Texas and runs a business called JAE Creative Company. Jaclyn has lived in a number of places and gained wisdom from her travels. She has small business branding experience along with experience in non-profit and corporate design.
‘The Joy of Lettering’ book contains a fantastic collection of information about almost everything you could want to know as a beginner lettering artist. The book begins with an introduction on lettering, which includes a really great timeline highlighting significant points in the history of lettering and type. It is refreshing to view an illustrated timeline, as often when learning about the history of lettering there can be a lot of information and it can sometimes seem a bit overwhelming. The timeline just highlights key points in history, making it easy to go off and do further research if you want to. After the introduction, the book moves on to clear sections like Stylized Typography, Lettering Techniques and Lettering with Alternative Media. These are all broken down into smaller sections again making the book easy to come back to, for example, to learn a specific technique or style.
This book is not just specifically for beginners either, although a great companion for any beginner it also covers a lot of different styles and techniques like paper cutting, using foils and creating your own typeface. So the chances are whether you’re a beginner or whether you’ve been lettering for a little while there will be something inside that will inspire you. I’ve discovered a few new styles and techniques from this book that I will be putting into action.
Similarly to the ‘Creative Lettering and Beyond’ book ‘The Joy of Lettering’ book also includes many step by step tutorials. They are great fun to follow along with and will have you applying 3D effects to your lettering, using a variety of illustrative lettering techniques, digitising your lettering and more. The steps are well defined and there is always a ‘Materials’ list at the start of each tutorial so you know exactly what tools you need before you get started. Each section doesn’t go into intricate descriptive detail but provides enough information to give you a great starting foundation for building many different types of skills within lettering. I can highly recommend this book, and I think it will be a useful asset to many.
Where to Buy ‘The Joy of Lettering’
If you’d like to experience ‘The Joy of Lettering’ for yourself the book is available in the US from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. A couple of other bookstores should have it in stock too so it’s worth checking in your local store. Within the UK the book will be available on the 3rd November 2016 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon, Waterstones and WHSmith.
If you have any hand lettering book recommendations you can send them using the button in the bottom right corner, and I will look into featuring them as part of Lettering Tutorial Book Club. Please include the title of the book, how it’s helped you, and what readers can expect from the book. Try to be as detailed as possible, as it will help others to know why they should consider your recommended book!
The Amazon links above are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you if you decide to purchase something I could earn a little. I will only ever recommend products that I think will offer you value which I have either used myself, or which I have thoroughly researched.
