Transcripts
1. Introduction: Lettering is therapeutic to me. It gives me a chance to really dive into letter forms and ignore the outside world. Hi, I'm Ade Hogue and I'm a designer, lettering artist, and art director based out of Chicago, Illinois. You may have seen my work painted on walls, printed in magazines, or maybe just on Instagram. In today's class, we're going to letter a quote from one of my favorite rappers. We're going to start by finding inspiration, creating a composition that works, building out those letter forms, and then digitizing and illustration. It's hard to believe but I really didn't love typography when I was in college. I've only come to love it in the past couple of years and it all started with a simple daily project where I lettered a word a day. I started with quotes in song lyrics because there was something I can relate to, there was something I listened to each and every day and it was fun for me and I think that's important. I'm excited to talk about this subject because it's something that means a lot to me. It's how I started with lettering and how I think that a lot of people can get there start, and I'm a big fan of teaching and sharing the information that I've gained over the last few years. My engineering background is a big part of the lettering work I do today. While it all has this artistic facade to it, it's all based on structure that's rooted in engineering. What lettering provides is that ability to break that structure a little bit, to create your own piece list, to be fluid and flexible with those things. You can follow along with a digital tablet or if all you have a pencil and paper, that works too. At the end of this class, you'll have your own design that you can print and you can share. We even create a postcard that you can male out to a few of your best brands. So if you're following along, upload your piece of the project gallery. I would love two see what you're up to. I hope you leave this class with the knowledge and power to go out there and create your own letter forms. I'm excited you're on this journey with me, so let's get going.
2. The Power of Lettering: I didn't start off as an artist or an art major, I went to college as an engineer. I eventually stumbled into a couple of art and design classes and fell in love. Soon after, I discovered this whole thing with lettering. It was purely based on buying new brush pens and new pencils and trying to figure out what I could do with them. Eventually, I did a daily project where I lettered a word each day, and that led to an entire career doing lettering work. When I stumbled into those art classes, I think I was most intrigued by this idea that what was in my head could finally live on paper, or on-screen, or painted whatever it was. There was something that was still foreign to me at that point. When I started off as an artist and as a lettering artist, none of it really came naturally to me. I own something I had to discover and I had to continue working on to get good at it. It took a long time before I was even willing to share it. But I'm hoping that this class is a start for you. Start sharing a little sooner. A word a day was a simple daily lettering project, or each and every day I would just letter a word. Sometimes it was just a brush pen sketch. Sometimes it was a full digital version that was exported. Then, I always share it on Instagram. It was that thing that kept me honest to make sure that I was sharing and putting that work out each and every day. I think everyone should try lettering because it's incredibly freeing. For me, it's super therapeutic, and how it manifests itself can be in my notebook. It can be in a sketch. It could be in something that I want to create to send someone. As I got into lettering, I started sharing my work on Instagram, and I realized the power of community. I realized how many people are out there who thought the same thing and felt the same way, and were willing to share their knowledge and information as well. Personal projects are incredibly freeing. They allow you to open up and discover new things. The fantastic part about that is clients often see that, and then they can hire you for those projects. Sometimes, a client doesn't know what they want until they'd seen it. I think that discovering these pieces, do them yourself, exploring each and every day, are great ways to find that out. For the people who would think that you need good handwriting to be a lettering artist, I'm proof that you don't. My handwriting's horrible, but lettering is a way of building letterforms not necessarily writing them. I think that that's the difference. Today, we're going to be lettering a quote from one of my favorite rappers. I chose this because it's something that means a lot to me, and I think it can mean a lot to other people too. Follow along with whatever you have, but here's a few things that I use. This is a pretty simple lead holder by Prismacolor with HB lead. I don't think there's anything special about any of the tools that I use, especially the pencils. They're really just for wrapping up forms at this early stage. So use whatever you have here. Also, have a couple of regular pencils too. These are a little easier to sharpen and have better erasers to work with. Also, keep a nice little eraser that I can use for any piece and I can really dig into little corners in order to erase things. Here's a lead holder that I use to sharpen that lead. Lastly, all I have are a few sheets of tracing paper and a ruler to help draw some guides. After we finish with these sketches here, we're going to move into Procreate on my iPad. After that, we'll also use our computers and we'll hop into Adobe Illustrator to finalize. So you need those two. You can start and finish most of this process just on paper, or you can do that all digitally. It's whatever feels comfortable to you. I like a little bit of a mix in between. I like to start on paper because it's tangible. I can discover new brush pens if I want. I can try out new methods here. But I know that digital tools make things much easier. Because it's a personal project, I think it's super important to set a deadline and stick to it. I know it's easy to hold on to these things and continue refining over and over again. But sooner or later, we have to get used to moving on from your project to go to something new. I practice this in my own work by creating things revolving around those hashtag holidays. Or just choosing a quote or lyric, and maybe post it on that singer's birthday. Sharing those things in those deadlines help keep me honest. But it also helps me stay relevant, and I think it will for you too.
3. Planning Your Project: So we're ready to get started and pick a phrase. This part's up to you, you can follow along with the exact same phrase that I'm using or one that resonates with you. Maybe it's a quote that you really love or a song you just been vibing to lately. We want to stick to something that's a little shorter in nature. We don't want something that's too long because it's going to take a long time in order to digitize. If you're feeling really stamped, just letter the name of the song that you just listen to or have a friend or family member tell you something that they want to see you draw. I wanted to be lettering a phrase from a popular poem, which eventually became a song by Tupac called a Rose That Grew From Concrete. I chose this lyrics not only because I love it, but because it really resonates with me. It's about coming from nothing. It's about growing through the cracks that are in the concrete and still being beautiful on the other side. Okay, you picked the phrase, great. Now, it's time to get into style cues. You can found references for style anywhere, whether it's on social media through Instagram, Dribble, or Pinterest, or from Found Type from going around the city that you live in and taking photos of the cool things that you see. I like to use books as reference, and here's one that I use a lot. This book references a lot of custom lettering from the '60s and '70s. I also have one from the '40s and '50s and from the '20s and '30s. What I love about it is it shows a lot of different variations when it comes to typography and lettering. So there's plenty of things from flared serifs to stack type to all sorts of things. This is one particular example that I really love, and it has some nice delicate balance between a solid thick area and super thin refined things. For this idea of the rose that grew from the concrete, I wanted something that felt delicate, that felt refine. So I think this style really works for it, but for your piece, maybe something a little different is better. You choose, you figure out what the reference is going to be and how you want to integrate it into your piece. But there's plenty of different styles in here. Maybe you want a little less thick than contrast. Maybe you want some more. But remember, you don't have to have this exact book, and you don't have to have these exact references. Those references can come from anywhere. When I'm choosing references, I often like to collect a couple, it prevents you from creating a piece as too similar to the one that you saw, but it also helps to broaden the horizon of the piece that you're creating. When I'm pulling the references that are digital from social media or beyond, I often print them out just so I can sketch over them on a physical sheet of paper. But it's not always necessary. Maybe you're on the move and all you have is a screenshot, that's totally fine. Just make sure you keep looking at it over and over again as you're drawing those letter forms. So getting those references that work for you, and let's get ready to draw your piece.
4. Sketching on Paper: You've got your phrase, and you've got your reference material. Now we're going to start sketching a little bit. I like to sketch on paper because it's super rough, and we don't have to worry about refining here. I feel like often when you start early on a digital tablet or on your computer, you tend to want to refine over and over again. You tend to want to make it perfect even at this early stage, where it's not even necessary. Here, we're just trying to get an idea for a composition before moving on to that next step. I start here with just a few composition sketches, trying to figure out what form is it going to take. So I know that I want to be creating a postcard, and I'm thinking it's going to be a vertical postcard. So I just to stick to this vertical aspect ratio. You'll see I'm not caring about how refined these little sketch boxes are, but they just give me something to start with. I look at the words that I have here, and I start to think about which ones are the most important. So I know that the word rose and grew and concrete are probably the ones that are most essential to this phrase. So I'd start by drawing a couple of boxes here for each of those words. At this stage, I'm only drawing boxes just to save time, there's no reason to write out the word every time, and this gives you an idea of how much visual space each of those words take up. So if I was really curious about how it's going to turn out, I can fill in some of these boxes to see how much space they take up. Whenever I'm ready, I can even start to write those words in. I'm not writing in a particular style, I'm just starting to rough out the forms and trying to figure out what styles belong in what place. Notice, I don't care how messy these sketches are, I'm just trying to rough these forms out. These aren't going to be the final piece, they just help me with an understanding of how I'm going to build this final piece. There are no minimum or maximum amount of sketches to do here. To those who are new, just trying themselves for the first time, I recommend doing at least 10 of these. It gives you a lot of different options to explore as you continue to refine down the road. As I was moving along, I came with an idea to maybe uniform these letters into the shape of a rose. So I think I can start by drawing a little bit of the form of the rose, and maybe fit those letters inside of it. Even though the reference pieces didn't have any illustration of a rose or a flower, I know there's something I can add to my piece to make it unique. So I think it's helpful to put those in those early sketches. So now that I've drawn out a couple of these, I feel like there's one or two of these that really work well. So I like this idea here where I'm moving to this rose form. I like the idea that the word rose and concrete and maybe the word grew it is more prominent in the overall frame. So these are two that I want to explore a little bit more. So in the next stage, I just take these sketches, and I draw them a little bit larger. So I'll start again with that basic rose form, that's going to take up most of the frame. I'll now use my ruler here to draw a couple of quick guidelines. These don't have to be perfect, but I just want to give myself as baseline and an x-height for each of these letters. That baseline is the line that all of your letters in theory sit on. The x-height is the height of all of your lowercase letters. So most of our letters are going to fit within that form. So I'll draw one for the word rose. I think there's going to be the one for the word grew, and I'm thinking there's also going to be one for the word concrete. These are all the same size. I have an idea that the word the, that, and from will probably a little smaller and maybe even tucked into the overall composition. So now I have a couple of lines here drawn. I'm going to start by just sketching out some of these words. I know the word "the" here is going to be tucked nice here at the top, and I'm just roughing this out. I got the. Then we're going to play with the word rose a little bit. So I start by drawing this capital R, this o, this script s, and this e. At this phase, it's important to start to look at each letter form as you starting to draw it. One important thing when you're first starting off with lettering is to not draw letters for memory. I always want to look at references each and every time I join a letter. So if I don't know what an s looks like, I want to go find an example of a script lowercase s within any kind of reference material, maybe it's in your book, maybe it's just online, to make sure you're staying honest and you're not breaking away from the tradition to what that s looks like. So here with this G, you can see I'm starting to reference this g that I see here in my overall frame, and I know that the G and the C are very similar, so I can use this overall same style here for the word concrete. I had in that word that here in the middle, and then the word from here as well. There's something that I really like about this one, but I want to continue to explore a couple more options at that same large-scale. So for this one, maybe I think the word concrete can be done in a totally different style. Maybe I think the word concrete is super upright and super condensed. As you see, I'm not worrying about the form here, I'm not worrying about making sure they're perfect, I'm just roughing them out each and every time. I still like the word rose here, so I'm going to draw that same set of guidelines in, start off with that capital R once again roughing it out, and maybe I'll even try one that doesn't fit in this overall rose form. Maybe all the words are at the same level of importance. So now that I have a few basic sketches, it's time for me to choose which direction I think I might want to lean towards. So while all these are very rough, you can still get a lot of character from these. I'm really feeling this idea of letting it can be contained by this overall rose form. So I think this is the one that I really want to move towards. While it's gray, I know that there's some things that I really like about some of these other pieces like this r in particular. I think it's really well done. So maybe it's something that I want to infuse into a new piece. At this stage, it's not important at all to stay tied or stay glued to these reference pieces. We don't need to try to match or create a letter that matches this exact style, all we're trying to do is just use this influence as we're starting these initial sketches. In that next phase, we're going to take these examples, and we're really going to dive deep with them, and we're going to make sure that they're infused into each and every letter that we draw. So now is your turn. Start by doing a couple of composition sketches, give yourself a number to reach, fill in those boxes with a few letters, and figure out which ones that you like. Maybe pick two with [inaudible] , then blow up to a larger scale. That way you can really get a sense of how it's going to look in its final form. Next up, we're going to take those references and really integrate them into each and every letter of a more refined sketch.
5. Refining Letterforms on Paper: The next step is to start to refine these letterforms on paper. So I went ahead and sketched a few more compositions, a few more boxes thumbnails, try and rough up that form just a little bit more, getting a slightly better sense of what I'm going to create. I want to take the sketch that really sort of love this overall flow. I love this idea of it resembling a rosebud. Now, we're going to take this and draw a little bit larger. So in this version, I'm going to turn my paper here and do a vertical version. I think that the overall dimensions are pretty similar to the sheet of paper. So I'm going to use this as my guideline. So I'm going to start by drawing those simple guidelines again with my ruler. So this first one is for the word rose. So what I want to do is now begin to look at my reference material, each and every time I'm starting to draw these letters. I can start by drawing parts of each character. So I usually start by just quickly gesturing out, writing out the form. I'm going to start with a simple R, and then an O, and connect it to the S here, and then finalize with an E. So I got the basis for the word rose. A lot of times people, when they're first starting out, have a tendency to draw the outsides of the letterforms. Here, I wanted to draw the skeleton of the letterforms and then begin a rough-in where those weights lie, where it gets thick, and where it gets thin. I'll look here letters like the C and the E. Another very similar in form to an O. I look here and I see that there's a weight on the left-hand side. I think it's a little thinner as it goes on the right. So I'm going to take that same approach here. What I want to do is I want to look at this letter each and every time as I'm starting to draw. So I use this little 45-degree method where I just sketch at a 45 degree angle to fill in that side. Now, I feel like matches here. But if I look at this O and I'll look back on my reference, it's a little more round than it is elliptical here. So I'm going to work in just draw a little more elliptical form here that represents the center. Now look at this O, and it feels very similar to that c and that e that I'm basing it off of. The next letter is this S. S is really tricky, especially when looking at a script layer forms, always suggest to look at a lot of examples here for S's. But one little trick that you can use is starting by drawing that same elliptical form here, that same little O form that created the first O that's there, and now build the S inside of it. So if there's an axis that floats down the center of a letter, just like this, that's the axis that floats down the letter center of the O and every letter that follows it. Here with this axis, what we want to do to draw an S is we start here at the top of this axis. We start to pull down. As we come down, we get about a third of the way through. We pull over to the right-hand side of this O and curve down to the bottom. There, we have the right-hand side of our S. I'm going to go ahead and fill it in with that same method that 45-degree sketch that fills it in. Next, it curves and it follows the backside of that O, before ending somewhere in here. If I look at my reference, I can tell there's a couple a little ball terminals, which are these little round areas at the end of that letter forms. I like this idea. So I'm going to fill in here with that little ball terminal that's there. So here, I have the basis of my S, and I have to figure out ways to connect the O to the S. There's a lot of different examples and suggests looking at references here. There's a couple different ways you can go. You can either start here at the top here and swing through and up into that S, or you can mimic this form right here that's on the side and have that little ball terminal here and then swinging up into the top of that S. If I really want to add more character, I see those little ball terminals here on the top of the R's here as well, I want to add a little bit more to that. I can even add one here at the top of this S too. This helps reinforce the overall style in your letterforms. So now that we have this O and this S, it's now time to create the e. In our reference, we have an e that we can pull from, but we also have an overall form which we can start to use. So here's where I use a couple of shortcuts to help me out. I'll use another sheet of tracing paper. You can just grab a scrap piece and I'll begin to sketch over this O, because I know this O and this e are very similar in form. So I follow the outsides over here and then just fill it in here. So I have this O and now, I can keep going back to it. What I'll now do is I'll take this O, on this [inaudible] tracing paper, I'll put it back behind the other, and use it as a guide. Now that I have it in place, I'll continue to look back on my reference here and I know it follow the same form, having that weight on the left-hand side, I'll go ahead and fill it in. Then it dips back down here, if I'm looking at my reference. I can tell that there's a little bit of weight that's on that right-hand side as well. So I'll sketch that in. Lastly, I just have to finish off that form to let it go a little bit further past because unlike the O, it doesn't close all the way. Once we have that e in place, now, we just have to think about this connection between this estimates e. It can happen in a couple of different ways, you can squeak through the middle of this S, but I think that's a little too loopy. Having one loop lead right into the next. So instead, I'm going to continue from the bottom of this S, right into the left-hand side of that e. As you notice here, my sketches are super messy, I'm not trying to do anything refined here. I'm just trying to get a sense of where these letterforms can live. Next, we're going to move on to the capital R. So this was a little more difficult. The overall form is more substantial. So looking at my reference material, I can tell that some of these forms are pretty similar what you see in the capital R. If I look at this T that's right here, I can notice where the weight lies here as it gets through from thin to thick to thin again, and this will tell us what happens. So I'm going to follow this form as a base to my art, that downstroke of my R. Remember that every time that your pencil goes down, it is a downstroke which means it gets thicker. So if you're using something like a brush pen here, as you pull down that brush pen, these lines get more exaggerated. That's where this weight comes from. It's important to know that as you're drawing each and every letter. So that's where all of these thicks and these thins lie, every time your pencil goes down, it gets thicker. Every time your pencil goes back up, it's stays thin. So if I follow this form, and I'm looking here at this reference for this T. I'm going to fill in this weight here on this side, creating this nice little downstroke. I like the idea that is swings over, circles in here, and then even tails off here. Now, I'm going to draw this in a little bit thicker, refining that form here. With this top of this r, I think it's something cool with leaving an overexposed here, like [inaudible] did pass a little bit further. I'll even add the same little ball terminal here, a little teardrop at the end, was to really reinforce this style. Now that we've drawn the downstroke, there's stem of this overall form. We'll go into this bowl form here. So R is getting a little tricky here. But the way I like to start this is by starting here on this left-hand side, swinging up and over down and then back out here. So remember, every time that my pencil goes up, it stays thin. Every time it comes down, it gets thick, and then coming down again, it's thick. So in this area right here, we'll draw that same little 45 sketch, that's what that weight is coming down, it's getting a lot thicker here. Here, it gets thin because it's going just horizontal, but then it tips back out and it's going thick again. So it gets thick until it reaches that bottom point. So you have something that looks like this. This is the basis for the entire sketch. I use this overall form to really inform everything that I'm drawing. This R, this O, this S and E, can help me with the rest of my overall phrase. So now, I have something that looks like this, where I've roughed up these three primary words. I know that the word the, that, and from are going to follow this overall style, but I'm going to hold off on those just for now. I want to continue to rough out these forms a little bit better. So on a new sheet of tracing paper, I'm going to start by going over this sketch again. I knew that first pass that I got a little bit over to the right-hand side of my tracing paper. So I'm going to work on centering this just a little bit better. So in my composition here, I think that I got pushed a little bit further to the right than I wanted to be. Because I knew I wanted to thin that overall rose form here. So on this next sketch, what I'm going to do is start by drawing those simple little rose lines on the outside, to give me a guide to put these next set of letters into. We're going to start here again with the word rose. Before we begin, we draw those same little lines for a baseline and an x-height. I'm going to continue to refine. So I want to make sure that the R gets kicked out far enough that there's room to place it in. So next, we'll continue to sketch or refine over these existing characters. I'm going to take this E, and I'm going to drop the bottom part of it just a little bit. I know that this is the end of this word on this line, and sometimes it's really cool instead of ending here at the baseline, to let this go just a little bit further down, and open up just a little bit more. It's a great way to finalize a word especially on a line or a piece. So I'm going to follow that overall form here, same here. What we want to prevent is a single letter having a different axis. We want to make sure that they're all following that same angle. So even if I look at the reference material, any lettering piece that you'll see, you can take your ruler and you can lay it over top of it. If I track back on each of these letters, you'll see that every letter here is on that same axis. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll take this single guide and I'll slide over and I'll just keep drawing a couple of more. This way, I can make sure that every letter that I draw follows along the same axis. If you start to get lost in all of these different lines that are happening on your paper, I've included in the class resources a set of lines and guides that are already there for you. They already have that x-height and that baseline. So you can draw all of your letters, making sure that they're consistent. An important thing to note there is that you're not drawing each of those letters necessarily on or in between those guides, you just use them as a reference point. I drew this one here in the O right down the center because it works perfectly here on the O. So as I go through again, I'm going to sketch in and fill in these letter forms. Here, it's going to be a little bit more refined than the last version, but it doesn't have to be perfect here. This is where I say that it's okay to use your eraser and don't be afraid to erase here a little bit. The cool thing about lettering is it's an additive and reductive process. So we're always sketching a little bit more and taking a little bit back. So I feel like that this left-hand side, this O, just got a little too thick when I was sketching it. So I'm going to remove just a little bit. Next, we're going to reference this little teardrop here in the O, before swinging into this S, and then fill in this form in as well, and then continue to fill it and refine. So now, we've drawn the word rose, it's now time to move on to the next word, that's at a similar scale here and it's the word "grew." So I've already done that quick initial sketch. I want to bring this to your tracing paper back underneath. So I know that the word "the" is going to happen up here. I need to also create some little bit of space for the word "that." So I'm thinking that that actually work really well actually over here. I know it's a little bit different than my initial sketch, but I think the spacing is a little bit better over here. I want to bring this to your tracing paper back and begin to sketch this next form. This little method of using a sheet of tracing paper to copy one letter and multiply it over and over again is super helpful. Not only right now on our tracing paper, but also when we move into softwares like Adobe Illustrator or even Procreate. We can copy a letter and paste it over and over again. So you don't have to recreate that letter from scratch each and every time. We'll finalize here on the C. So now, we have the basis for our lettering piece. We know there's a couple of pieces that are leftover, the the, the that, and the from, they're tucked in here. If we want to, because these pieces are so much larger than these individuals smaller pieces, what I often liked to do is on a totally new sheet of tracing paper, just do the word the, that, and from, and then composite them in a photoshop before finishing a final sketch. You could also just decide to quickly rough-in this overall forms. So I'm going to rough-in the word "from," the same with the word "that," I'll do the same exact thing. The last piece is the word "the," and it's very similar. So we have our rough sketch in which we can now work with. So while this is now a final withal, it's a good basis for the rest of our lettering piece.
6. Refining Shapes on Paper: So now that we've ripped out all of the letter forms and we have an overall composition that feels like it works pretty well, it's time to address that shape that I want to place all this in. It's that rose bud. So I'm going to take a new sheet of tracing paper, place it over top of it and this sheet is just going to be dedicated to figuring out this rose form. With this rose form, it is going to use a little bit of flourishing. Flourishing is a little bit tricky and it's not something that I necessarily suggest to someone just starting out because it could take a lot of time and effort just to figure out the balance that flourishes take. If you're having trouble just working with the lettering pieces, continue working on the letters and don't worry about this overall rose form. I think this is something I'm adding into it, just to add a little extra contexts. I'm going to follow this overall form here of the rose bun on the left-hand side and the right-hand side. I'm going to bring the sketch from underneath. Now I'm going to worry about just this rose form. In this bottom flourish form, I just want to fill in this little bit of negative space happening underneath the word concrete. What flourishing is you just feel like a natural movement that's happening. With every flourish, what we want to try to do is not let a curve break too many times. I try to minimize it two to three times. What that means is if a curve starts going up and then goes back down, it probably shouldn't go up again before cresting over. So you probably want to end it somewhere in there. I'm going to take that same approach, as we start to draw this form. The exception is, is when it completely flips over and changes directions. So I'm going to start here at the bottom. I like it mimicking the bottom form of this bulb here, and I'm going to let it go down, up and back down. So I it curved over. Now I'm going to change directions to go back again. So I roughed out this form, it's really quick and really gestural. I just draw these quick little strokes. I add a little tear drop in here to mimic the same forms that are happening over and over again throughout my piece. I think it's a good place to add it in. For we're follow a slightly different approach, in which the down strokes still do have weights but it's more of a cross stroke that has weight. So these areas that go from left to right here are actually the ones that are filled in. The most important thing with flourishes is that too thick areas don't cross each other. So we want to make sure that wherever there's a thick line, it's only a thin line when it passes through it. So I'm going to continue to work on these flourishes here. One thing that really helps oftentimes is to use something like a brush pen. But brush pens are great because they allow you to add a little up pressure and down pressure to every single stroke that you draw, and it becomes really fluid. So when I go over something like this, I can simply swing through, come down, swing over, come up. So I can create something that feels real natural in just a few strokes. So I went ahead and traced a few more versions of this rose until I found one that I feel like really worked. I use a couple of different brush pens and went through a couple different versions. But now is where a letter and piece could take one of two directions. The first direction is to continue to refine on paper, past this stage and there's something that's super tight. Here are couple of examples of a few lettering pieces that I've done. What I mean by a super refined sketch? So these sketches are often done with a soft pencil like a six or an 8B, in order to get these super dark areas of color. This helps me really understand where all the weight lies and where the positive and negative space in each of these letter forms actually is. The other direction is to take this rose sketch that we have here and put in the software like Procreate or we can continue to refine that even more digitally. The reason why I like to use Procreate here is because Procreate has some really cool tools in order to help me draw those lines perfectly straight, or to get a nice smooth circle here. It also helps me if I want to replicate letters over and over again like this E that happens multiple times, or this O that was multiple times, I want to copy and paste it over and over again. Like I said before, you can always use another sheet of tracing paper to copy those forms over and over again but Procreate makes it a little bit easier, and that's what we're going to use next.
7. Refining in Procreate: So now we're at the stage that if we decide to pull our piece into Procreate, we'll begin to refine here. My document is just set to the screen size. You can make one a little bit larger if you're going to print directly from a file that you create here. But I know that our final step is going to be an Adobe Illustrator. So I'm not too worried about what sizes this image is. I know that if I keep the documents size small enough, I'll actually be able to create more layers as I go, which is super helpful for me. So in my document what I often like to do is to use it on a black backdrop. So I'm going to go to my layers here and I'll go down to background color and I'll change this to black. The next step is to import my sketch. I've already brought mine in here on my layers panel. I'm just going to bring up this image. So here's our sketch that took a photo of and dropped into Procreate. So I'm going to take this layer and I'm going to reduce its opacity by touching that a little in there and sliding this down quite a bit. I want to be able to see it but I don't want to give them away or to distract me. The next thing is for me to choose my brush and there's little brush icon over to the left. I don't use anything that's two pressure sensitive. I often just use the pencils or the pens here just to illustrate the form. Remember that lettering is drawing the form versus writing it. So this font pencil down, I'm going to use. So on my new layer, I'm going to start by drawing a couple of guides. Of course, I already drew them on the piece of paper but I needs to draw them here in procreate. So if I place my pencil down and drag over and hold, Procreate will snap to drawing a straight line. If I press my finger down on the screen, it will snap it as zero, 35, 45 or 90 degree angle. So instead I'm going to draw this line. I'm going to let it hold and snap and we'll try to match the same guides that I drew before. Once I have one, most people will want to draw a second line and try to see if they can match. This will become incredibly difficult especially when it's at a unique angle. So what I often like to do is go up here to my layers. I will duplicate this layer by sliding over to the left of it, hitting duplicate and you'll have two lines now. If I use my move tool, my selection tool, I can now grab the second line and I'm just going to slide it down. Once I have these two lines together, I can take two fingers pinch those two layers together and they'll form one. So next I know I need to draw two lines that are the exact same distance away from each other, at the exact same angle rather than trying to draw them again, what I'm going to do is that same sort of approach where a swipe left on that layer and I duplicate it. With this new layer, I use my move tool and I'll slide it down in a straight line from the one above. I'm do that one more time for that last word and I'll hit duplicate. I'll use my move tool and slide it down one last time. Sometimes it's helpful to merge or combine these into a group, so you can quickly turn on and off that layer of guides. So I'm going to pinch through those three layers combine them all into one. So now those guides come on and off in one simple movement. Once I have these lines, there's another set of lines that I want to draw and instead axis that I use once before. So by creating a new layer, I'm going to go back to my brush tool, using that same pencil, I'm going to do the exact same thing as I do with those original lines that we're going for the baseline and x-height. This time instead is for my axis. So I'm going to let it snap to a single line. I'm going to draw that new axis. I usually like to do two or three of them grouping together, then duplicate that layer again and move it over. Remember these don't have to be perfectly spaced in-between each other, they're just there as reference points for us. With his guides is often helpful to reduce the opacity here. So if I tap that a little in again, I can slide this down and I could reduce the transparency just so it's not super distracting. I'm going to do it with both layers here. All right. Now that I have a couple of guides, it's time to start drawing. So I want to hit the plus icon to add a new layer. I'm going to change my color back to white here and I'll begin to draw. So the first letter I like to draw here is typically a circular one. So we can start by drawing that elliptical form here. I'm going to start by drawing the inside of it, starting here at the top, drawing over to the left and down to that bottom edge. As you'll see, this little curve is super wonky just from me doing that. Procreate actually has a super useful tip where you can start to draw a curve over to another point. If you hold it down, it will actually snap into a smooth line in between the two where you can try to mess that curve a little bit better. So I messed that right inside of it and I'm going to try do the same with the left here. I can now use my eraser tool here and I can shrink down to these areas and erase just a little bit where things might feel a little off. Now that we have a nice elliptical form here, we can use this as sort of base the rest of the letters off of. One thing that I noticed in my original reference, I really like the aggressiveness of the slang here. So I think I want to bring that back. All I'm going to do is take my original sketch here. I use the move tool, I'm going to shift it over here just a little bit. I'm going to skew it, just touch. The next letter we have to draw is an S. So we'll continue to draw each character one by one. So now we've got two of our characters here. The next step is replicating forms in order to create new ones. So I know that this O and this E are pretty similar overall. So I can use my selection tool here. I can draw a set of marching ends around that O. I can hit duplicate and it'll create a second one. You'll see if I go to my layers as a new layer here that's from that selection. I'm going to use my move tool. I'm going to bring it over here to the right where that E is placed. I'm going to use my eraser here and I'm going to erase part of this letter because I know I won't need all of this. Then I'll begin to draw in new parts of the form. So I guess something that feels pretty good so far. So I want to combine this E with the O and the S. So I'm just going to take those two layers. I'll pinch it together and now they're altogether. Next, I want to go to this uppercase R. I'll start here at the top. This is what I did in real sketch and I'll draw it down. I usually rotate my canvas here and I'll come back and fill in this other side. You'll see in certain places, I use this smooth curved line and sometimes I don't. Because remember, we can always go back and refine it, so don't worry about making it perfect on the first try. So as you see I'm just following that sketch each and every time and then I'll go back in and I'll fill these areas in. As you will see, I'm not necessarily sticking to the sketch at every single junction here, sometimes I'm going to make new corrections that maybe I wish I would have made on paper and if I was still continue to refine on paper, maybe I would have. So now we can use Procreate to replicate letters over and over again. It's sort of what we did from the O to the E transition, but now we can start to do it again. Using my selection tool here, I'm going to select part of the E here as well as the O, omitting the S, because I don't need it right now. I'll hit duplicate down here at the bottom, I use my move tool, I'm going to slide it down. I know that the top part of this E is the exact same. So I'm going to move it into its correct place. I'm going to take my eraser. I'm going to erase the bottom half of it because I know that it dipped a little lower than I wanted in this particular E. Next I'll do the same with the O, right? I don't need this top part of the O because that's already been defined by that E. I'll draw a selection around it and I'll move it into its place. So now we have a fully formed E. I can tell in comparison to my sketch, it talks in a little too close and maybe I need to extend it a little further, that's totally fine. I'll erase that area and those leftover. Next it will continue to draw the rest of these letters in the form. So I'll go back to the R here. Same sort of principle applies while I draw this new form. Once we have the left-hand side of the W here, we can also do the same approach. We can create a selection around it. We can duplicate it and we can slide it over. I'm going to take these layers, I'm going to pinch them together so they are one. Now I'll go back and refine. I'll then move on to all the letters in the word concrete, remembering that I can always replicate similar forms from those Os to the Es and duplicate them each time. So continued to refine quite a bit here and I'm going to play, so I'm feeling pretty good about. I've switched over from the pencil for a couple of times into the inking section to a technical pin. The technical pen just allows me to clean up some of these lines a lot more. At this stage, now I want to think about that rose bud. So already taken that sketch and I've imported in to Procreate. I'm going to do the same thing here, I want to tuck this a little in and I'm going to reduce the opacity quite a bit. There is no one edge, it was probably a little too small for the piece that I've drawn here and procreate. So I'm just going to warp it just a little bit so it matches. Next I'm going to create a new layer and I often do this with a totally new color. So this way it makes sure that I don't mess anything up. I'm going to switch back to this pink and I'll use my technical pencil or technical pen again here and I'll start to draw this rose form. I want to create this form now, so I can figure out which areas need to be filled in with other parts of letter forms. So this doesn't have to be perfect at all, it just gives me an idea of how this overall form is going to be when it's done. Once I have something that looks like this, I can now take that sketch and I want to hide that layer. So now I have this overall rose form and I can try to figure out what areas of space I need to address. So the first one here, I think the rose is now maybe a little too big. So I'm going to take the left-hand side here and I'm just going to bring it in just a little bit. I actually think is super interesting that parts of the letters start to overlap there, which can be useful later. So now on its wholly new layer, I'll keep this same color pink here. But I think there's areas in which I might want to fill with different parts of letter forms. So I noticed this huge gaping negative space to have as in here. One thing that could be cool to now make a little loop here and maybe you would continue in a little bit further. Now we'll look it as an extra little spaces happening here as well. So maybe you from the bottom of this G, I extend and create a new flower, it sort of fills in this negative space. As you see, I'm not refining these areas. What I'm trying to do is just draw our gestures so I know what could feel that space. There are a lot of different things that you could do here but the thing that's really important here when doing any sort of flourishing or embellishments, is to make sure that you don't seemingly create a new letter that doesn't exist. We want to make sure that we're always stick into the fundamental principles of each individual letter and we're not letting these things get in the way. Another way to make sure that doesn't happen is by reducing the weight of these. So to make sure that they're not as thick as the rest of the letters in the form. Once I have something that I feel pretty comfortable with, I can continue on that same approach that I was doing before. I go back to my original layer, change our pen back to white and I'll begin to draw in here, on this first layer to fill in these areas. While it may feel pretty settled, I think that there are some places that I can still address. Maybe I want to change a certain squash or embellishment just a little bit here but I'm not quite ready to commit to it. On a new layer with a different color, I'll continue to draw those areas in until they feel refined and that way I can use those layers or parts of those layers is an order to create areas that might fill in a negative space a little bit better and maybe I like a little more. So I'll continue refining and continue sketching over this form until I have something that feels a little better. Now we're at the stage where it feels pretty refined. I've gone through and I've changed colors of a couple different layers here and I added just some different colors so I didn't get too confused. There are some new areas in which I wasn't fully ready to commit to yet like I said before and I just wanted to try them out. So you'll see areas like this with this G and this R, you'll see how I extended the R here a little bit to help fill that negative space and then filled in that little teardrops current it's there. It's important to remember that the colors here aren't something that are gonna be in the final piece. So our goal here is to recreate this in Adobe Illustrator and since we're doing that, none of this really matters. If you're going to take this as your final design and export directly out to Procreate, to maybe share on social media, then you probably want to go through and make sure all these colors are exactly the same. But in our case, we don't need it. Whether you're refining on paper or on an iPad, now's the time to get to a place that you feel really good about and you're ready to go into the digital phase. You're ready to hop in Adobe Illustrator and finalize this thing.
8. Finalizing in Illustrator: Now you feel like you're in a really good place to do your lettering piece and it's time to digitize in the Adobe Illustrator. But before we get started, I want to share something that I've attached in the class resources that you can use to follow along if you're having a little trouble. It's called the Ultimate Guide to the Bezier Method for lettering. The Bezier method is just based on Bezier curves which are mathematical way in order to draw curves between two points. So this guide will help you when you're starting to plot those points. I know that sounds super scary and mathy, but I've written it in a way that makes sense to anyone who is just starting out. So be sure to give it a look. So we're going to hop over to our computer. From Procreate, I just exported the document as a JPEG and sent it to myself. I'm going to start by just naming my document. I'm going to only have one Artboard here. Then for the size, I'm going to do because I'm thinking about a postcard, that's going to be four by five. I want to do it a little bit bigger. What I've learned in the Adobe Illustrator is the smaller you start to design things, when you want to move just a pixel at a time, it moves a little bit too far. So I'm just going to double the size of it. So right now, it's eight inches by 10 inches. For the Bleed, if you're creating a design where a part or the entire thing goes past the edge of the postcard, you want to make sure that you have your Bleed adjusted for that. Generally speaking, a good bleed is 0.125 inches, that's an eighth of an inch. A Color Mode, because we know that there's going to be a printed piece, we're going to keep this in CMYK. CMYK is used for anything that's printed. Lastly, for these Raster Effects, we're going to keep it high at 300 PPI. So once we have all this, we're going to hit Okay, and it will be into our document. So now that we have our document open, we're going to go to File, Place. We're going to insert our sketch. As you see, the sketch is much larger than the artboard that I've designed. So I'm going to shrink it down, scaling it, holding shifts, and then move it to the center. Once I have this sketch placed here, I'm going to go over to my Layers panel. I'm going to grab this image and I'll change this opacity. I usually find that putting the opacity about 10 works well. So now this image is super light. I'm going to click this little missing button here which locks that layer. It now makes sure that can't actually grab that photo when I don't need to. These new layer is where I'm going to draw my new artwork. So our first step here is to create some guides. It's the same thing that I did when I was in Procreate. So you can bring up your guides by hitting Command, R, you bring up your rulers here. So normally, you would just click from this ruler, you would drag down to create a guide. But we know that we want to create a guide that is a little bit of an angle. So to do that, there's another way to go about it. I'm going to undo that here. I'm going go to my Line Segment Tool right here, and I'm going to draw a line in a similar way to how I did in Procreate. What I'm trying to do is match the bottom line of that O and that S. Now I'm going to take this line, I can copy it, and I can paste it by hitting Command, C, Command, V, and I'll move it up to match at the top. So one thing I'm also going to do is use these guides to help create the thickness of the thinnest area of each of my letters. So I'm going to copy these lines, Command C. I want to paste them in the exact same location as they are right now, which is Command F, it paste it in front. I'm going to just use my up and down arrow keys, and I'm going to move it up just a couple of pixels. Now I have two sets of lines. The top line defines the outermost part, the next line, the innermost. Through these lines, I can now turn them into guides. I just select two lines, I go to View, Guides, Make Guides. You see that these two lines now convert into guides. The great thing about those guides, you can always go back to View, Guides, and Hide Guides and get rid of the completely or simply bring them back, View, Guides, Show Guides. These guides right now are locked. What I'm going to do really quickly is I'm going to go back Guides and I'm unlock those guides. I'm going to grab those four lines subtle, I'm going to copy them, I'm going to paste them, and I'll move a new set down for the next word. So once we have our guides in place, I start by using the Pen Tool. I'm going to plow points here and then go back and refine. So our Pen Tool is located here on our toolbar as the icon that looks like a pin, the shortcut is P. I'm going to start by plotting my anchor points. I deploy an anchor points at the extremes which are the topmost point, the bottom most point, the leftmost, and rightmost. What this does is it provides stabilization to your curve. Some people choose not to do this. They like to plot their anchor points along the way. But I feel like if you plot your anchor points along the way and you place too many at weird angles, it becomes a little hard to refine later on. So the way I teach this is I look at my letter form here. One way you can do is you could take a guide and you could drag it down until it touches the letter. That will be the top point of the letter. Another way is just to look at every time that letter changes directions. So what I mean by changes directions, is any time it goes from up to down, or from left to right, that's a change of direction. That is where an anchor point should lie. So the way I start is by simply taking my pencil, clicking, and letting go. I don't add those handles right away. I know some people might, but I don't. I go to the leftmost part of this letter here, which is over here, and I'll click again. I'll go to the bottom most part of this letter, and I'll click again. I'm going to go to the rightmost point if I follow this letter, and then I'll finish where I started. I'm going to get rid of that field just so I can see what's underneath it. When applying those extremes, you're not only plotting the outside most extreme, but you also have to plot the inside set. What I mean by that is this is the right most point, but there's also another rightmost point that's right in there. It's the inside here. So I'm going to use my Pen Tool again, and I'm going to plot those same points. So now you have something that looks a little like this. It's a little weird, but it's the foundation for how we can create our letters. Next, we use our Anchor Point Tool to add handles and continue to refine. To access your Anchor Point Tool, you'll right click on the Pen Tool, and you go to this last little icon. The short cut for it is shift C. So what I'd like to do here is what's called a 90-degree method. With a 90-degree method, what I want to do is make sure that I always holding Shift, and I pull those anchor point handles. When I hold shift, it makes sure that every handle is either at zero degrees, 45 degrees, or at 90 degrees. That provides a lot of stabilization, and to me makes it super easy to refine later on. I'm not going to worry about both sides of it. All I'm going to do is go around and pull those handles on every single point. Every single time, clicking, dragging, and holding Shift at the same time. I did it for the outermost points. Now I'm going to do for the innermost. As you see, you have some weird little areas right in here. I'm not going to worry about that quite yet. I'm just adding handles to each of those anchor points. Now we're going to use our Direct Selection Tool which is this white arrow. The shortcut is A. We'll click a point. We'll hover over it. Now, we're going to adjust the handle of just one of those sides. So if I click and I start to move it, you'll see if I'm not holding Shift, now it starts to get off that angle. So I want to make sure that my finger is always held down on Shift and I'll pull this handle upward until it starts to match. It's not going to be perfect because I need to use this other side too. You see in this little area where those handles actually cross each other. When you have handles cross each other, it often create a little bit of a loop or sharp corner. So what I want to do, is I want to pull back this area. I'm going to hold shift, and I'm going to pull it way back. A general rule of thumb are those two handles will never actually meet. If you're trying to create a nice little round area, you want to make sure they're pulled back just a little bit. So I'll go back here and I'll continue to refine. Remember, each and every time, always holding Shift. I want to pull back some of these points here. It's important to note that this is a point in which a lot of people get super fresh idea when it comes to this process. It takes a long time. It's not easy, but it's worth it in order to create super smooth curves in a way that is super scalable. I could take this when I'm done with it and print it the size of a billboard or as small as a postcard which is super valuable to me. So as I continue to refine, I want to be able to create this as a final letter. Right now, it's just two lines that are completely separate from each other. What I want to do is take this front shape, this front inner circle here, and subtract it through the backward. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring this into the front, I'm going to go to Object, Arrange, Bring to Front, so it's all the way at the front of my canvas. I'm going to take both of these two lines. I'll go to Window, Pathfinder, and I'll bring it on Pathfinder Window. I'm going to use this Minus Front tool, so I'm going to take that front one, and I'm most subtract it through the back. Once I click it, it looks like nothing happens. But if I swap the stroke and the fill here by clicking that little set of arrows, you'll now see I have a solid letter form. So I pull all these handles ever fine quite a bit until I have a form that's super smooth. It doesn't feel like any work and there's any harsh angles in the curve. Everything feels really natural. So next, we're going to start on the letter S. I'm going to start in this central area, and I'm going to move up. So I'll start here. I know that the rightmost point of this is right inside of this letter. The topmost is here, the leftmost is here, the bottom most is somewhere in between, it's actually in there somewhere. Then it follows into the central point. So I'm going to pull out an anchor point that's there. Then I'm going to continue to follow it down. I'm going to follow this side of the line. I could continue through and just create this top shape, but it gets a little confusing to me. So next is not really a rightmost point that's in here. We keep going down because there's still moving down to the left here. Our bottom most point is somewhere in there. So I'll continue over until the leftmost point. You see here this letter has a fill not a stroke. So I'm going swap this stroke and fill, so I can see what's in it. I'll continue. This letter is moving up to the right. Then its rightmost point is there. It's topmost point is here. It's moving down to the left. It's leftmost point is there. It's bottom-most is here. I'm going to continue to act like this letter just continues all the way through. I find the rightmost point again. It changes directions again, leftmost, rightmost, topmost, and then gets back in here to this inner point. It's actually inside here. Then I'll finalize that shape. Remember that this part takes a while. So don't get frustrated. Continue to pull those anchor point handles until it feels pretty good. Sometimes it helps to take a little bit of a break after you've been working on an entire piece, come back and look at it with fresh eyes. So after a little refining, we're at a place where we feel pretty good about the overall direction. So we can continue to move down a line drawn each and every character in that same manner. Remember that we can always use similar letters and copy or replicate them over and over again in order to create the final. Remember that A is just this O with a little extra piece that's added to it. So don't be afraid to copy that piece and paste it and build off of it. So we plot our anchor points, and we have something that feels pretty good. We've smooth R's curves, and we have a base structure for most of our letters. We've used some different letters, but now let's create some new ones based on some pieces that we already have. So next we're going to address the word V here. There's a couple of pieces that feel really similar and there's even the common letter. We know the E is in both, but I like this down-stroke of the R being the same as a T. So I'm going to just grab this E, O shift and also grab this down-stroke of the R. I'm going to copy both of those and paste them. I'll now scale these down here just a little until they match the size of the sketch. Now I'm going to have the scaled down version in the place. I can continue to refine to create these new letters. The E is in its perfect position. But now we have to create a new piece off of something that we already have. As you can see, the square shows only in this R here is a little different than the one I sketched for the T. We could keep it if we wanted, but I'm going to delete it and build the actual one that that I sketched in. So I'm going to use my Lasso Tool which is right here in my Direct Selection Tool, the shortcut is Q. I'm going to lasso around those anchor points there, and I'm going to delete them. I don't want them anymore. I'm now going to take these anchor points and I'm going to move them into position because I know this T is just a little bit longer than the R that was there before. I'll go back to my pencil here, shortcut P, I'll click and I'll drag, holding shift to make sure those handles stay level. I'll plot that leftmost anchor point in the same way, that topmost one, the rightmost. I have to now swap my stroke and my fill. Remember shortcut Shift, X. We'll end back where we started. We will make sure to hold Shift. Next we're going to go back to our Anchor Point Tool here. Remember the shortcut is Shift, C. We're going to click, we're going to drag, and we're going to hold Shift. We're going to pull those handles in the place where they're on the top. We want to make sure that we're holding Shift here to ensure that those handles are locked at zero, 90, and 45 degrees whenever possible. Remember, there are going to be opportunities in which you probably need to break the rules and that's totally fine. Okay. So we have all our anchor points plotted. We refine all of our curves. We feel like we're in a really good point,, and it's time to move on to that rows form that contains it all. Let's start to plot those points. Both flourishes and especially with this which feels a little bit more like an illustration, sometimes I break the rules a little bit more. You'll find less of those anchor point handles that are at that perfect 90 or zero degrees, and that's okay. It's good to be able to break the rules when necessary. So I'll continue to go around the form, I'll continue plotting these points, and refine those handles and until I have something that feels pretty good.
9. Preparing to Print: Now we've done all the letters and we've even done that frame illustration around with the flourishes, and it all feels pretty good. I'm feeling really confident about it and ready to move on. So my initial idea for this was to create a postcard. So let's frame it up for an actual postcard to be printed. Remember that we created this document at double the size, so in this new document, we're going to create an actual size. So I'll copy all the elements, I'm going to go to "File", "New" and I'll create a new document here. This new document now, is going to be four by five, which is that normal postcard size. Only one of these art boards. I'm going to change it back to CMYK. I want to make sure my bleed is at 0.125 inches and I'll hit "Okay". I'm going to now paste this image into the center, which is command v. So I can hold Option and Shift, and I'm going to scale it down until it fits in that post card form. So now it's in this final size and it feels pretty good. We could print in black and white as it is now, but maybe it might look best in color. So what I sometimes like to do, is to duplicate this art board and change the colors. So I'm going to Document Setup here, I go to edit art board, and what then we're going to do is hit this little new art board icon, and it'll populate a new one. I'm going to do it a couple times so I can create a few options. When I set this in our board, I can copy all the elements. I can paste it into a new one by hitting command f right in the center of each of those art boards. Now, I'm going to think about changing the color. To me, it makes the most sense to maybe have this rose part in red, and this little bit of foliage stems and the thorns in green. So I'm going to select the lines that create the rose bud. I'm going to go to my swatch panel and I'm going to use a nice little red color here. We can always go to our color palette here and adjust a little bit, maybe we felt like that red should be a little deeper or a little darker. So we'll just drag the slider over. I want to take all those green parts which I've grouped together and I'll go back to my color swatches, and I'll choose a green. I think this has a really nice feel, it really enhances the idea of it being a rose. But maybe in another version, I want to do a background color. I'm going to go to my rectangle tool. I'm going to draw a rectangle here, that's past the document size that goes down to the bleed. It's in front of everything right now but I'm going to go to arrange, send it back, and now it's at the very back. If I use my eyedropper tool here, I can select that green that was chosen before to make sure that they're the same. Maybe in this version, I think a reverse color palette works a little bit better. I still want to see what this looks like in red, so I'll use my eyedropper tool shortcut I and I'll select that red again. I'm going to grab these letters here in the center and maybe I'll try them in white. I don't necessarily feel in this version, so maybe this background actually should be black instead, with these leaves in green. So I think this feels pretty good and it's ready to be printed. So now it's time to export the final piece and there's a couple of different ways to go about it. If I was just going to show this image on social media, I'd probably go to "Export", "Export As", and it'll just save it as a PNG or a JPEG. But I'm choosing either one, I want to make sure I use art boards, so it only uses the stuff that's in the center here. If I want to send this to print through any kind of manufacturer, I'm probably going to go to "File", "Save As", and save it as a PDF. When I've saved as a PDF, there's a couple of different options you probably want to click here. The preserve illustrator, editing capabilities, it's often good to keep saved there. What I often like to do is go down to marks and bleeds, go to trim marks and make sure that that's checked. That way if you have any colors that go past the edge of your document, you'll have lines that tell you where to cut it. I'll now here save PDF and you'll get a final PDF that has trim marks, that's ready to be printed, and cut down to size. Here's the PDF of the final pieces. You'll note the little trim marks here which tell me where to cut it down to, and now it's your turn. Bringing your sketch into Adobe Illustrator, plot in those anchor points and refine those curves until you have a final piece that's exported and ready to either be shared or printed. Remember that you can always look at this guide of the Bayesian method that I designed if you get a little confused or lost anywhere along the way.
10. Final Thoughts: So that's it. You guys have come a long way. From initial concept sketches to a final piece that's ready to be printed. The reason why I love printing something physical is so I can touch it and I can hold it. It's really awesome to create something that's truly shareable. I can mail this out to family members, friends, or anyone I think that needs a positive message for the day. That's super powerful. So when it comes to sharing socially, one thing that I would like to do is to take a photo of the physical piece and use that as my image. I'll probably share this piece on Tupac's birthday because it's important to me. But maybe your piece is different. So find that that's important to you, that resonates with you, and you want to put a message out on. Please share that on project gallery. I'd love to see what you create. Remember, you don't know what will resonate with people until you've share it. Over the course of this class, I hope you found new love for lettering, especially when it comes to script. I hope you've learned some new techniques and you've built some new skills off of it. Thanks for taking my class. I'm really excited to see what you guys create, and if you made a postcard, you can mail me one. Take care guys.
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