{"id":1582,"date":"2014-09-09T13:33:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T17:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2025-10-06T17:59:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T21:59:41","slug":"hand-lettering-passion-project-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/hand-lettering-passion-project-01\/","title":{"rendered":"Hand-Lettering Passion Project 01"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I am going to begin to hand-letter. Well, ok, I started this project on Sunday. If you have hand-lettered before then you know the time and patience, sketching and drawing (and redrawing) it takes to get your lettered piece to a level of satisfaction.<\/p>\n

I discovered a really great course thanks to Skillshare<\/a>. Skillshare is a learning website filled with easy to follow tutorials. This passion project is based on the teachings of, Letterer, Mary Kate McDevitt. What I like about Mary Kate is she is a very talented lady for one and, two, I was attracted to her thoughtful approach to lettering. It’s not just about pretty letters sketched on paper but that the type styles come from a place of meaning and concept. Coming from a design background this is important to me.<\/p>\n

Mary Kate’s lesson begins with choosing a phrase and finding a concept around this phrase. I have a notepad filled with Be Better phrases and it was time to put them to work. I chose the phrase “A better tomorrow starts with being better today.” I figured this will help inspire me as I create the lettering. This phrase is a bit more abstract in terms of coming up with visuals and style to incorporate into the lettering which made it quite a challenge. But hey, I wanted to stay inspired so I went for it.<\/p>\n

I pulled the words: better, start, tomorrow and today, from the phrase to help me with my concept. Starting with these words I created a list of words that related in some way. From this part of the discovery process I knew in the end I wanted lettering that relayed movement, brightness and positivity. A start flag seemed important to me as well.<\/p>\n

Better: Bigger, greater, more valuable
\nStart: Takeoff, start-off, running start, day 1, setting out
\nTomorrow: World to come, to be, prospect, destiny, outlook
\nToday: Present, in vogue, modern, current<\/p>\n

Following Mary Kate’s direction I then created a mood board that consisted of colors, images and typographic inspiration. I really liked the illustrated details and some typographic elements from vintage racing posters. Having visuals to refer too was a great help in finding clarity. Already I was asking myself “Is my phrase too long?” “What does a cursive T look like again?”<\/p>\n

From the inspiration exploration phase it was time to sketch (over and over again). I’ve attached some thumbnail pencil sketches (there are many), from where I started to the final inked sketch. I had a lot of fun creating this hand-lettered poster and I look forward to working on the final product which will involve scanning the ink drawing and digitizing it. I will post the results as soon as I’m finished!<\/p>\n\"Hand\n\"Hand\n\"Hand\n

I found the process of hand-lettering to be quite time consuming and your hand and neck might hurt, from hunching over your sketches (for hours), BUT it is a lot of fun. I have a new found respect for professional hand letterers. Their patience and time spent creating beautiful typographic works of art not only continue to inspire me but also amaze me.<\/p>\n

To visit the work of Mary Kate McDevitt<\/a>
\nTo visit the Skillshare class with Mary Kate McDevitt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I am going to begin to hand-letter. Well, ok, I started this project on Sunday. If you have hand-lettered before then you know the time and patience, sketching and drawing (and redrawing) it takes to get your lettered piece to a level of satisfaction…. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[80,71,45],"class_list":["post-1582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-being-better","tag-graphic-design","tag-illustration","tag-marketing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bebetterstudios.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}