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Free Booklet On Lettering Basics, by Mark Van Leeuwen

The document provides an introduction to hand lettering basics. It defines the differences between typography, lettering, and calligraphy. It then discusses serif, sans serif, and script letter styles. The document guides the reader in drawing letterforms with guidelines and consistent widths. It explains constructing letters from basic shapes and ensuring repetition. Finally, it shows how to add flourishes to create expressive lettering while maintaining legibility.

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Radosław Kwieciński
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
195 views

Free Booklet On Lettering Basics, by Mark Van Leeuwen

The document provides an introduction to hand lettering basics. It defines the differences between typography, lettering, and calligraphy. It then discusses serif, sans serif, and script letter styles. The document guides the reader in drawing letterforms with guidelines and consistent widths. It explains constructing letters from basic shapes and ensuring repetition. Finally, it shows how to add flourishes to create expressive lettering while maintaining legibility.

Uploaded by

Radosław Kwieciński
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Hand-Lettering 101: Free Booklet on


Lettering Basics

Sending a message is always better when done with style. Lettering artist and type
designer Mark van Leeuwen believes that typography can take viewers on a visual
and storytelling journey. But in order to make the most of your designs, it's
important to rst get to grips with the basics rules.

For example, what exactly is hand-lettering? What's the difference between


typography, lettering, and calligraphy? And where should you start when drawing
letterforms?

In this free booklet, Mark answers these questions and more as he introduces you
to the basics of hand-lettering.

COURSE DOCUMENT DOWNLOAD:

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A course by Mark van Leeuwen

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F I L Y T

fi

1. TYPOGRAPHY BASICS

A Brief Introduction
What is hand lettering? Often the terms typography, lettering and calligraphy get mixed up. These
three are related but different disciplines, and present rather substantial differences.
Typography is the art of working with pre-existing fonts or typefaces to create designs, layouts
or posters; Calligraphy is the art of writing, using various pens and brushes to meticulously and
beautifully write letterforms. Lettering on the other hand, though the outlook can sometimes look
similar to calligraphic work and follows the same principals, is the art of drawing letterforms.

First I’d like to give you a brief overview of the most common typographic styles: Serif, Sans serif
and Connected Script. Of course these three mai categories have a large amount of sub-categories
with a lot more different styles, for example Blackletter, Slab Serif or Brush Script.

Serif

Sans Serif

Script

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A Brief Introduction

When working with letter shapes and learning how to draw them it can be useful to know some type
design principles and type anatomy terms.
Drawing out horizontal guide lines can help you achieve a consistent height throughout your letters,
ascenders and descenders. If needed, you can also draw some vertical lines to help with stability.

A key component that is almost as important as the letter shapes them selves is the negative space
in between them.

These letters are equally spaced considering the By doing this, some letter combinations
width of each individual letter. generate much more negative space than
others, which results in bad legibility.

The goal is to reposition the letters and tweak Finally, it’s also important to pay attention to the
the distances until the space between each negative space inside the letterforms, to make
of them is more or less equal in volume. This sure that those are consistent as well.
process is called kerning.

5
2. DRAWING LETTERFORMS

Serif Letterforms
After you’ve drawn a few horizontal guidelines, when drawing your own letterforms it can be very
helpful to start off with a skeleton. This can be a very rough and fast process, so you can quickly
map out your letters, without spending any time on details and complex shapes yet. The first step is
to decide how wide you want your letters to be.

Narrow/Condensed Regular

Wide/Extanded

With the help of vertical guide lines you can give your letters a consistent width, so you’re sure of
how much space each letter is going to take. — Not all letters require the same amount of space,
some letters (for example m,w) are much wider than others (r,i,j,l)!

If you are planning on drawing a very bold style, keep in mind that your letters will be much thicker
once you add more weight to them. This means the letters will be needing room to grow, so you can
plan ahead and space out the letters from the start.

6
Serif Letterforms

After drawing the skeleton it’s time to add the body (or contrast) to your letters. The contrast
determines the difference between the thicks and the thins in the letter shapes, and the angle at
which these are placed. This is really what determines the style and character of the typography.

High Contrast

Low Contrast

Oblique Contrast

Reverse Contrast

7
2. DRAWING LETTERFORMS

The construction of all letters is based on three key shapes: Square, Circle and Triangle. Some
letters have just one of these as blueprint, others are created from a combination of multiple.

It is very important to keep an eye on consistency throughout all letters. Throughout the alphabet
there are many similar shapes, all letters are linked to one another. Shape repetition is therefore a
fundamental part of letter design.

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Serif Letterforms

Expressive Lettering
Now you know the basic steps of how to draw your own Sans and Sans Serif letters, let’s have a
look at how to add some “spice” to your lettering and make a decorative/expressive word mark.

Step 1
To start off, with the help of
vertical and horizontal guidelines
draw the skeleton of the letters.
If you’re drawing in a serif style, I
recommend adding the serifs from
the start, as those can change the
width of the letter.

Step 2
Now let’s add some flourishes, to
make the word mark more playful.
Adding these to the skeleton helps
to get a better feel of the overall
shape right from the start and
allows you to easily tweak the
construction of the letters, adjust
spacing or add some ligatures.

Step 3
Lastly let’s give some width and contrast to the letters, paying attention to the consistency throughout
the lettershapes, as well as the decorative elements. Make sure to not go overboard with decorations,
because too many flourishes and curls can harm the legibility of your design!

9
2. DRAWING LETTERFORMS

Below you can see some examples of various serif shapes, as well as some types of flourishes and
swirls you can draw inspiration from.

Top vs Bottom Serifs

Flourishes

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