As an illustration major I’ve come to realize that many graphic design techniques overlap into illustration like hand-lettering for example. The first time I tried to create my own hand-lettering was in the Digital Illustration class I took this past semester and before then I did not realize how many illustrators create their own hand-lettering. This was our second project and the goal of the project was pick a short quote or song lyric and design your hand-lettering according to that. For my project I picked a quote from the song Art Deco by Lana Del Rey. After completing this project and having a lot of fun with it, I decided I wanted to make it a point to try out hand-lettering again in the near future.
Now that it’s summer break it is the perfect time to start some new projects on my own including another hand-lettering project. My newest hand-lettering project is not done yet, but I figured I can share what I have completed so far.
The first step I took was to figure out which words I wanted to illustrate and this could be anything really, lyrics from a song or a quote from a book. Music has always been very important and inspiring to me, so I picked song lyrics again to create my hand-lettering. The lyrics I chose were, “I’ll stay awake ’cause the dark’s not taking prisoners tonight,” which is from a song called Ode to Sleep by Twenty One Pilots. After picking out lyrics I started drawing in my sketchbook to get my mind to start flowing with ideas. I drew out basic sketches of various letters to figure out what style I wanted to go for. Then I also drew out a layout of where I wanted to place each letter on the page. Once I had an idea of what I wanted my design to look like I began drawing it out on Bristol paper. In this more final design I drew out the words in a more specific way. I drew out the less important words of the quote smaller and simpler. Then, so the more important words would stand out, I made them more prominent by making the letters larger, thicker and more decorative.
As you can see, right now I just have a basic design, but soon I hope to scan my design into the computer, edit any impurities in Photoshop/Illustrator and add a background. I can’t wait to share the rest of my progress and the finished piece within the next week or two.
My featured image was taken from this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRr44AbYGk8
This is really cool! You should try out hand painting the letters onto wood. It’s really fun. Or another cool technique if you are a solid designer but not so great illustrator is to design the lyrics on the computer. Reverse. Print out. Then you can do a photo transfer onto paper or fabric, canvas etc. From there you can add a hand drawn touch if you’d like to. Can’t wait to see the final product 🙂
Thanks so much! That sounds like a really good idea. I’ll definitely have to try hand painting the letters onto wood sometime. 🙂