Gelato Lettering

Just spent the last 2-3 days completing this Gelato lettering. It started as a sketch on a train ride, and when I got back to the Genoa, I knew I had to digitize it. I think it would look great on a t-shirt. Below the final lettering, you'll see a nice animation of the process in Illustrator. I simply took a few screen grabs along the way, then sequenced them together so you could see how I did it.

Quiet

Here's a shot of some lettering I've done as a demo for my class. I've never lettered much using a pencil, but it's easy to understand why so many designers recommend drawing by hand over the computer. For the word "Quiet," I wanted an upright script with some swashes and a ligature. After getting the drawing into a satisfactory place, I scanned it and redrew it in Illustrator. The pencil sketch probably took an hour and redrawing in Illustrator took no more than 30 minutes.

Lettering

I started teaching a course on hand-drawn lettering while here in Italy, and it's only the second day of class, but I'm really enjoying it. My students are doing well, despite some of them being architects, landscape architects, and interior designers. I'm also drawing along with them, to show them how I approach lettering problems and to reveal my process. So far we're just working on scripts in pencil. Below, you'll find a couple of examples of the word "Quiet," and it's meant to evoke the meaning of the word "quiet". I chose a vertical script, because of it's stillness, and it is fairly light in color with a few extra flourishes. I'll be posting more from my sketchbook as the class progresses.