The Best Hand Lettering Guide for Beginners and Beyond

From magazine covers to subway advertisements, restaurant boards to movie posters, hand drawn lettering has truly seeped into the fabric of popular culture. One of the reasons hand lettering is so popular is that it marries words with a more visual way to represent ideas: A skilled hand letterer can take one phrase and interpret it 100 different ways—each conveying completely different meanings. 

What You’ll Learn in This Guide

Unlike more complicated art forms (calligraphy letters, we’re looking at you), you can understand the basics of hand-drawn lettering and get to drawing letter styles pretty quickly. All you need is a couple of hours and a uni-ball pen. This comprehensive hand lettering guide (most of which was inspired by Mary Kate McDevitt’s class, Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners) will go over the basics and get you started on your hand lettering adventure in no time.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is Hand Lettering?
• Hand Lettering vs. Calligraphy Letters
• Hand Lettering Supplies
• Different Types of Hand Lettering
• How to Begin Hand Lettering and Hand Lettering Practice
• Drawing Letter Styles
• How to Avoid Common Hand Lettering Mistakes
• Courses to Take to Learn About Hand Lettering
• Hand Lettering Artists to Follow on Instagram

What Is Hand Lettering?

Hand lettering is an art form wherein letters are individually drawn, in the artist's chosen style, to convey a visual message or feeling. Hand lettering employs the use of different strokes, designs, and letter-drawing styles to create unique artistic pieces with language at the center.

How Long Does it Take to Learn Hand Lettering?

There’s no hard-and-fast timeline for learning hand lettering but, by starting with easy fonts to draw, most artists can begin in a matter of minutes. Consistent hand lettering practice will only enhance these basic skills, and the full evolution of your competency will depend on how much time you can devote to hand drawn lettering. For most people, working on this “fancy lettering” is fun, and getting motivated to practice is easy!

The Difference Between Hand Lettering and Calligraphy

Calligraphy, while also beautiful in its own right, differs drastically from hand drawn lettering. Calligraphy is concerned with replicating already-established fonts, whereas hand lettering artists have a bit more creative license within their work. You might think of calligraphy more as penmanship and hand lettering as the art of drawing letters. 

Supplies You'll Need for Hand Lettering

If they say the best food is made from the best ingredients, the same idea can certainly be applied to hand lettering fonts and projects. The kinds of pens, pencils, and tools you use when hand lettering will have a huge impact on the quality of your project. 

Since there are so many tools out there—from the really good to the really, really bad, we’ve decided to narrow the list. Many of these supplies are the same ones used in the Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners class. You can buy many of these hand lettering supplies at your nearest arts and crafts store or on jetpens.com.

Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil

Why are they called number 2 when these pencils are so obviously number 1 in our hearts? We all know these bad boys from our days in high school math class, and they’re still the best pencils in the land. From a hand lettering perspective, these pencils are perfect to use when you’re sketching a rough copy of your design or experimenting with different drawing letter styles.

Blackwing Pencil

The Blackwing is like the Dixon Ticonderoga’s cooler older cousin. If you’re still in the sketch phase or working with easy fonts to draw but want to present a more polished pencil drawing, trace your work with a Blackwing pencil. These pencils are made with softer lead and produce a much darker line quality than your Dixons. It’s a great pencil for handing in cleaner sketches to clients or for scanning a sketch into your computer.

uni-ball Pen

Nothing beats a classic. When Mary Kate is ready to ink her drawing, the first thing she reaches for is her trusty uni-ball pen. It’s got a fine, steady tip and a handling that everyone’s already comfortable with, and it draws dark, quality lines. Best of all, you can pick one up in a convenience store. What’s not to love?

Sakura Pigma Graphic 1 Pen

Microns or fine-tip marker pens like the Sakura Pigma Graphic 1 are great choices for “fancy lettering,” especially if you’re looking for a thicker line quality than the uni-ball can offer.

Pilot Fineliner Marker Pen, Fine Point, Black

This is another fine-tip marker that’s effective for drawing thicker letters or letters that don’t require as much attention to detail.

Kaweco Sport Pen

The Kaweco sport pen is a calligraphy pen that will do wonders for your lettering game. Unlike traditional calligraphy pens that require a messy dipping well, the ink cartridge is actually inside the Kaweco. It also has a fancier nib that’s just like the ones on calligraphy pens but with an exterior that’s much easier to handle.

Pilot Parallel Pen

The Pilot Parallel pen is another type of calligraphy pen that produces a distinct (and novel) line quality. It has a special parallel plate nib that allows artists to write thick lines or paper-thin lines with different strokes. You can also blend a single stroke from thick to thin with a slight flick of the wrist.

Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen—Soft Tip

These types of brush pens have actual brushes at the nib, as opposed to traditional pens with more rigid tips. They’re perfect for letter drawing styles wherein the artist is looking to give the letters a fun, brushier quality. Similar to the calligraphy pens, the cartridge is inside, a feature which allows you to cleanly control the inkflow without having to dip the brush into a pool of ink.

Copic Wide—110

This Copic Wide marker is a perfect lettering tool for experimenting with textures and broader stroke effects. Its massive nib allows you to create thick words in a snap, and after handling it, you’ll realize it’s meant to strut its stuff on bigger pieces of paper. It’s versatile, too. You can draw finer lines with just the edge of the pen, or thick lines by using the entire thing!

Ruler

You probably have one of these lying around your house, but just in case you don’t, try a classic stainless steel ruler with cork backing. It’s sure to come in handy as you begin to sketch out your guidelines and the edges of your letters.

Drawing Compass

Here is another tool you probably haven’t thought about since high school math class. You absolutely need a compass if you’re planning on drawing letters on a curve. Any compass will do, but we recommend buying a more professional model, as opposed to the compasses you used in middle school.

Light Box

Light boxes are perfect for tracing your rougher pencil sketches over with ink. Simply turn on the light box, put your rough sketch down, and then put a new piece of paper over it. You’ll be able to see your lines clearly as you trace your new copy. 

Computer Paper

That’s right. Especially when you’re first starting out, basic computer paper is perfect for your needs. Feel free to sketch, make mistakes, throw out, then rinse and repeat. If you start doing more professional designs, you may want to upgrade to more professional-grade paper.

Hand Lettering Basics

Now that you’re fully equipped with the perfect pens, pencils, and other supplies, we can move on to the essentials of this lettering guide! Similar to any other skill (soccer, ping pong, underwater basket weaving) the key to a complete understanding of hand lettering and hand lettering fonts is a solid familiarity with the basics.

Letter Anatomy

The first thing aspiring hand letterers need to understand is lettering anatomy.

Font designers create letters and fonts by adhering to certain guidelines. These aren’t figurative guidelines—these are actual lines on the page that help artists figure out the size and shape of the letterforms. We’ll go over the five main guidelines hand letterers use to inform their craft.

Baseline

The Baseline might be the most crucial of all the guidelines (which is why we listed it first). Quite simply, the baseline is where all the different letters sit.

Midline

The Midline goes by many different names, including the Median Line or the X Height. Basically, the Midline acts as the top boundary for the lowercase letters. A lowercase x, for instance, would be drawn from the baseline up to the midline.

Caps Height

The Caps Height is the upper limit line of the uppercase letters. For example, the uppercase N extends from the Baseline to the Caps Height.

Descender

Specific lowercase letters like q, g, and y have longer tails or loops that drop under the baseline. The line that those tails fall on is called the Descender.

Ascender

The Ascender is likely the most complex of the five guidelines. A kindred spirit to the Descender, this line serves as the upper bound for lowercase letters that extend above the Midline. Certain lowercase letters that reach the Ascender are h, b, and f. The tails of these ascending letters may even climb above some uppercase letters.

Lettering Glossary

In order to play baseball, you should probably become familiar with the terms “ball,” “bat,” and “base.” On a similar note, in order for you to grasp hand lettering, there’s a variety of terms you should understand. Most of these terms describe the physical parts of specific letters. Did you know there was a name for the bar across a capital A? The dot on the letter i? The circle in a lowercase e? You will now! Acknowledging the different parts of each letter and appreciating how they relate to each other will allow you to become more deliberate as you create letters of your own.

Serif

Most people first become familiar with this word in high school, scrolling through all the different Microsoft Word fonts in order to snazz up that lackluster history paper (though we all secretly knew Wingdings was the MVP). Quite simply, a serif is the tiny line attached at the end of a stroke of a letter. A typeface that has serifed letters is called a Serif Font.

Sans-Serif

On the other hand, sans-serif fonts are typefaces without (you guessed it) serifs. The letters on sans-serif fonts don’t have little tails. The most important application of this tidbit: now you know that the widely beloved/intensely hated font “Comic Sans” is actually short for something like “Comic Book Sans Serif Font.”

Apex

The apex is the point at the top of a letter where two different strokes meet. For instance, the apex is the point of the capital A. You can make your apexes sharp, rounded, or blunt, depending on the vibe you’d like you letters to have.

Crossbar

The crossbar is the horizontal lettering stroke that crosses the uppercase A and H. The stroke that goes across the lowercase e is also called a crossbar. Experiment with your crossbar by making it thicker, lighter, or uniquely angled.

Script

Though you probably learned about writing script in middle school (and then never used it again besides signing your name), it doesn’t hurt to go over the concepts behind this style again. Script is a fluid type of lettering that mimics cursive handwriting. Most of the letters connect with each other in an elegant, flowing style.

Bow

The bow is the rounded bottom section of the capital letter B.

Open Bow

While the bow of the capital letter B usually connects with the main vertical stroke, the Open Bow is an example of a bow that doesn’t connect and instead stops halfway.

Stem

The stem is the name for the main vertical stroke of a letter. All the other strokes branch out from the main letter stem.

Arm

The arm is the vertical or horizontal stroke of a letter that doesn’t connect to a stem on one or both sides of the letter.

Counter

The counter is the enclosed space of a letter. For instance, the circular part of an uppercase Q or the empty space surrounded by a lowercase o would be called the counter.

Eye

The eye is basically the counter for the lowercase e.

Void

Contrary to popular belief, not all voids are meant to be filled. The void in letter anatomy is the open (often pointed) space between two strokes—most prominently featured in the lowercase v and w.  

Vertex

The vertex is the point at the bottom of a letter where two different strokes meet. The W, for example, has two different vertices at its base.

Tittle

Ever wonder what you call the dot on top of an i or j? It’s a tittle! Fun fact: the phrase “to the t” is short for “to the tittle”—for whatever reason, we eventually dropped the “ittle” part.  

Bowl

The bowl is the fully enclosed, round part of a letter. The curvy part of the lowercase b and d is the bowl. Playing with the size and shape of the bowl is a great way to experiment as you take on more lettering projects.

Ear

The ear is the tiny flourish extending off the bowl of the lowercase g or the curved flourish on some lowercase r’s.

Swash

A swash is basically an exaggerated serif. It’s a flourish that extends one of the strokes of an uppercase letter.

Foot

The foot refers to the very bottom of a letter with a straight stroke. You’d refer to the bottom of the lowercase p as the foot of the p.

Tail

The tail is basically another word for the descending (or downward) stroke on a variety of letters. The main lowercase letters that have tails are the g, j, p, q, and y. The tail is the part of the letter that extends to the descender line.  

Spine

The spine is the central curved stroke of a lowercase or uppercase S.

Spur

The spur is a small offshoot of a main stroke, not necessarily at the end of the stroke.

Cross Stroke

The cross stroke is the horizontal line that intersects the main stroke of the lowercase t or f. Although the cross stroke is confused for the crossbar, the two are actually pretty different. Crossbars connect two different strokes, whereas cross strokes intersect main strokes.

Ball Terminal

The terminal is another name for the end of a letter that doesn’t have a serif attached to it. The ball terminal is an extended, often rounded terminal with a tiny protruding ball extending from it.

Ligature

A ligature is the connecting of two different letters through a line, curve, or loop. Certain letters lend themselves to ligatures more easily. For instance, hand lettering artists can combine the two cross strokes of a pair of t’s to create a ligature.

Dropline

The dropline is an outline artists add to their letters to give them depth.

Drop Shadow

A drop shadow is basically a dropline that gives the letter depth, with the additional effect of shading. Drawing a drop shadow isn’t difficult, but it requires you to plan which way you’d imagine light would fall on the letters.

How to Start Hand-Drawn Lettering

The next step in your journey is arguably the most important—learning how to actually draw a letter. The fact that you’re physically drawing the letters is what differentiates hand lettering from simple writing. Each letter is its own miniature project that requires you as the artist to make distinct creative choices. Mary Kate McDevitt breaks down letter drawing into four distinct steps that will make constructing letters a breeze, even for beginners working with an easy hand lettering font. When working through these steps, it would be a good idea to sketch the letters with either your Dixon Ticonderoga or your Blackwing pencil.

1. Draw the Frame of the Letter

The first step is simply drawing the letter as you would normally write it. This very basic written representation will serve as the skeleton for your letter, no matter how decorative you make it later on. We recommend drawing the letter using your guidelines so that you can make sure it’s spaced evenly and in the correct proportions.

2. Add Weight to the Letter

During this step, you can take the frame of your letter and expand it outward. Mary Kate advises you to think of drawing the letter in terms of drawing shapes. You can think of the A, for instance, as drawing two rectangles. Then, you could take your ruler and draw two rectangles at an angle and one rectangle (the crossbar) connecting them.

3. Add Style Details to the Letter

After you have a more fleshed-out drawing for your letter, it’s time to add your style details. We’ll go over letter drawing styles and how to choose them later, but for now you’re determining what types of serifs to add (if any), and the thickness, angles, and shape of the curves.

4. Add Finishing Details to the Letters

Now is the time to give your lettering some more pizazz. Add flourishes, designs, inlines, shapes—whatever you want to make your letters really shine. Add in your dropline and drop shadow, too!

Want to Learn Hand Lettering?

A Comprehensive Guide to Hand Lettering: Creating Graphic and Script Styles

Take the Course

Lettering Styles

The style you embrace for your lettering project is as important to the project’s outcome as the words you choose. While it does not alter the content, the way you decide to draw your letters impacts the context of the piece, and it will be the main influencer behind what the audience feels when they process your words. Mary Kate highlights six different styles of hand lettering, all of which use an easy hand lettering font and which are great for beginners. If you want some more style inspiration, check out our piece on 35 eye-catching hand lettering fonts and when to use them.

Script

While there are many different ways to draw a script word, Mary Kate drew her example with thick letters and an elaborate cross stroke on the t. Notice how the E has a lightning bolt–shaped swash that sweeps under the entire word? It’s these sorts of quirky details that will really make your hand lettering works jump off the page.

Serif

This is a simple, classic style that’s a perfect jumping-off point for beginners. It’s not as complicated as its cousin Fancy Serif, but it still includes the swashes, spurs, and tiny embellishments that make serifs such a fun font to hand letter.

Sans Serif

Just because this style doesn’t have any serifs doesn’t mean it’s not eye-catching. This kind of sans serif style is perfect for the words that you don’t want to emphasize in your lettering project, like pronouns, prepositions, or articles. Notice how Mary Kate played with the guidelines and lowered the X Height, an effect which makes the letters look more elongated.

Fancy Serif

You’ll notice that Fancy Serif is very similar to the Serif style, only with more exaggerated serifs. When an artist includes more pronounced serifs on each letter, it creates a charming, elegant effect. Also notice Mary Kate’s attention to detail on the tiny lightning bolts emanating from the center of the letters.

Ornate

The Ornate style is very similar to the Fancy Serif style, except the artist has a bit more freedom regarding shape, size, representation, and curvature. Notice how pronounced the swash of the R is and how tiny the I is in comparison to the E and the L. The Ornate style is perfect for hand letterers who want to experiment with flourish, curved letters, or more elaborate designs in addition to the main letterforms.  

In a Shape

This lettering style allows your drawing to directly mimic the word’s content—which, as an artist, is a really exciting opportunity. Certain pieces lend themselves more easily to this style than others, particularly words with strong visual affiliations. In this example, Mary Kate was able to draw letters in the shape of an easily relatable lightning bolt to better communicate the word “Electric.”

Blackletter

Also known as Gothic Style, Blackletter provides your letters with some of that classic medieval flair. Notice the sharp and elaborate I and the boldness of the rest of the letterforms. Blackletter styling goes all the way back to the year 1150, and it was used for the German language up until the 20th century. Mary Kate decided to have some fun with this style and add lightning bolt characteristics to each letterform.

On a Curve

Time to pull out your compass! First you’ll want to draw two semi-circles and use the bottom one as your baseline. Make sure to draw all the letters as straight as you can; the vertical strokes should be as perpendicular as possible to the curved baseline. Pay attention to spacing and curve consistency and don’t try to eyeball it. Your compass is your friend!

Representational

This style of lettering is in the same vein as the “In a Shape” style. It attempts to transpose the syntactical content of the word onto the visual context of the word. In this case, Mary Kate transforms all the letters into elaborate lightning bolts. Try coming up with your own representation font styles!

Common Mistakes in Hand Lettering

In Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners, Mary Kate examines the common mistakes hand letterers often make when first getting their bearings. Being aware of these snafus, and recognizing when you start making them, will accelerate your learning process. 

Mistake #1: Not Understanding How to Approach Script Lettering

Mary Kate says the main issue people have with script lettering is knowing when to apply thick downstrokes versus thin upstrokes. When writing in a script style (and for brush lettering especially), the thick, darker marks are composed by pushing the brush down, and the thin, airy strokes are created by lightly dragging the brush up. By employing this technique you can create beautiful, almost calligraphic letterforms.

Mary Kate says hand letterers who are first starting out tend to make the entire stroke the same thickness, regardless of whether the stroke was initially formed with an upstroke or a downstroke. Some beginner hand letterers shade in upstrokes and don’t shade in downstrokes, giving the word an awkward look. As you shade in the word, consider whether the stroke was made by moving your pen up down. If it was moving down, feel free to shade, and if your pen was moving up, let the stroke remain thinner. Of course, you can play with your thicks and thins, but when you’re starting out it’s important to get this fundamental rule down.

Mistake #2: Using Too Many Swirls

Another mistake beginners often make is adding too many swirls to their words. Swirls are fun and give many hand lettering projects their spice, but adding too many swirls on each letter could overwhelm the word and make the art look sloppy —exactly the opposite of what you’d like to accomplish. Instead, add broader, more open swirls that keep the word the focus of the art. It’s important to understand that the ornamentation is an accessory to the word, not the other way around.

Mistake #3: Using Thick and Thin Strokes for Parallel Lines

Many beginners also make the mistake of wanting to add thick strokes on the sides of a letter, regardless of whether or not those side strokes are parallel. For instance, people will often make the side arms of a W very thick, which produces a sloppy effect. Instead, Mary Kate advises making the parallel downstrokes the thicker strokes, i.e. the left arm and the middle right stroke. On the other hand, it’s totally okay to make the side arms of the uppercase H thicker, as its sides are parallel to each other.

Mistake #4: Not Being Aware of Baseline Heights

Mary Kate also advises her students to pay attention to the X Heights of their letters. Basically, if you make a choice regarding a letter’s dimensions, it’s important to stick with that choice and consider its effects as you draw the other letters. For instance, if you decide to lower the baseline in the word RABBIT and make the bowl of the R a bit higher, it’s important that the crossbar of the A and the bow of the B are also positioned correctly. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a letter that looks awkward when compared to the rest of the word.  

Mistake #5: Using Incorrect Spacing

One of the most important lettering lapses to avoid is incorrect spacing. When drawing your letter frameworks, make sure you don’t squeeze your letters in too close to each other. It may look okay without any embellishments, but once you start adding serifs or flourishes, the letters might run into each other, creating a sloppy and cramped lettering project that takes away from the word.

Mistake #6: Making Cross Stroke on E Same Length as the Others

This tip specifically concerns the letter E, which is the most frequently used letter in the alphabet. When you’re drawing a capital E, you might have the desire to make all three arms the same length. Mary Kate advises against that practice and encourages letterers to make the middle arm a bit shorter than the other two. The reason? Readability. When there’s another letter right next to the E, that little bit of breathing room in the middle makes it much easier to read.

Classes to Take Your Hand Lettering Skills to the Next Level

While this guide serves as a great place to start, we strongly encourage you to check out some classes to get a true handle on the basics. These classes are taught by hand lettering pros, people who understand the art form inside and out. They’ll review the step-by-step lettering processes, share which tools you need (and when to use them), give instructions to draw basic letterforms, and go over more advanced techniques. Many of these tutorials even come with project guides, worksheets, and warm-ups.

Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners by Mary Kate McDevitt

This comprehensive introduction to hand lettering is one of the most popular classes on Skillshare, and as soon as you take it you’ll see why. Mary Kate is an excellent teacher, providing a thorough but not-intimidating runthrough of the basic hand lettering concepts. She breaks each lesson down into smaller steps and makes lettering look totally accomplishable for even the most novice of hand letterers. This class will save you hours in getting a hang of the basics, and it serves as the basis for much of this guide.

Hand Lettering Styles and Techniques for Embellishments by Spencer Charles

Spencer Charles is a typographic designer and letterer, and he presents an amazing class on how letterforms work. He shows his students how to add embellishments, drop shadows, and all sorts of other flourishes. Plus, he provides exclusive tips for hand letterers who want to work in Adobe Illustrator. This is a pivotal class for anyone who wants to dive deep into the more advanced parts of hand lettering.

Lettering for Designers: One Drop Cap Letterform at a Time by Jessica Hische

Jessica Hische is a lettering artist and author whose clients include Wes Anderson, The New York Times, and Wired. Her class has a simple (yet critical) goal: understand how to create just one beautiful letter. She shows you how to sketch your idea, digitize your work, and give your piece its crucial finishing touches. Her class’s stats speak for themselves: 19,000 students, 712 completed projects (many of which are stunning in their own right), and a 99% positive review rate.

Hand Lettering Artists on Instagram

Instagram’s a perfect social media platform for hand lettering artists. It’s totally visual and it allows artists to share polished projects as well as works in progress. In order to really dive deep into lettering, we recommend you start following some of the masters. Here are some of our favorites:

Mary Kate McDevitt

Mulyahari

Matthew Tapia

Maeraki

Lauren Hom

Jessica Hische

Joshua Harris

Create a Word With Bouncy Letters!

Bounce Letters: Adding Character to Your Hand Lettering

Take the Course