#drawing type

After looking through my Pinterest boards I remembered how much I loved type before uni and how I kind of don’t use it so much anymore.

I borrowed this book from my brother in law and absolutely loved it and have since started drawing type again. 

Have you ever wanted to make your own font? Try creating your own unique typeface by using this exercise from Drawing Type!

Exercise: Draw a totally hand-rendered piece of work. Here, I am trying to encourage you to create work without the use of the sheets so this can truly be your own original piece of hand-drawn type.

Turn your page into a modular grid, or use gridded paper. This will help you keep letters in line and distribution easier to manage.

Write your words down in your own handwriting and create multiple layouts and compositions.

Once you have your basic layout sketched, scan it, and print it out multiple times as practice sheets. Here, you can vary your design direction without committing to one.

Try adding perspective to some of your words to make them really stand off the page, or you can add textures or patterns within certain letters.

Watch your x-heights, descenders, and ascenders when drawing. Use the grid to help keep them all at the same size.

Use a range of pencils to shade some parts of your work to add more depth.

Extend script faces by adding swash elements to descenders or ascenders, or elongate other parts of a word for a more custom feel. 

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Here is some amazing typography inspiration by designer Luke Lucas from Drawing Type.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SWEET & SAVORY 

Luke Lucas is an illustrator, designer, and typographer with a self-made career spanning two decades. In the late ‘90s, he co-created FourInARow, an inline skating magazine that was distributed worldwide. With two other partners, he started Lifelounge-Simultaneously a creative agency, online creative cultural portal, and glossy print magazine. It was through Lifelounge that he began to experiment with conceptual illustrative typography, custom lettering, and type design, and it wasn’t long before he was attracting illustrative type briefs from agencies, publishers, and brands across the globe. His regular clients include Nike, Target, USA, Esquire, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In 2011, as a new father, Luke left Lifelounge to spend more time with his family and to pursue a full-time freelance career focusing on type.

AMAZEBALLS

This piece was created for the 2012 group type show Who Shot the Serif at Sydney’s He Made She Made Concept Gallery. The process for this piece, as with most of my work, was to commence with some initial sketches on paper to help visualize how the letters and ligature might interact. Once the lettering was decided, I made a scaled-up version of the type, placed it over several layers of black foam core that had been glued together to form a dense base, and began to insert dress pins along the edges of the letters. Once all the pins were inserted and my fingers stopped bleeding, I used French embroidery cotton to connect the pins by making overlapping lines in a repeated pattern across the face of the type. Once this stage was complete, I finished the work with a final outline in the same cotton to help define the letterforms. 

HYPE TODAY 

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