Transcripts
1. Class Intro: What are they? What do they mean? Letters are with us from day one. Over time, we hardly even notice them anymore. For graphic designers, that early fascination never really goes away. Every time we look at a font, we're asking: "what is it communicating?" I picked up a new hobby when the world went into lockdown, it started out as something I did just for fun, but it quickly became a daily exercise and an essential creative practice for me. The 36 Days Of Type challenge came round and I decided to push myself to create and post a new letter to Instagram every day, using only Lego parts. My posts got a great response and I realised I had stumbled onto an easy way to demonstrate the fundamentals of type and typographic design and I've been wanting to make a class about it ever since. Hey, I'm Paul! I've been a Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and type lover for the last 19 years. I usually teach illustration classes here on Skillshare, but today's class is all about letters. In this class we're going to learn how to construct letters out of simple modular shapes, to create a personal monogram. Yes, a monogram. Because you deserve it! I'm going to teach you everything you need to know in order to create a monogram bursting with personality. From how to identify the most important parts of each letter, to professional spacing, layout, and color applications. This class is designed for beginners, but graphic designers and anyone fascinated with letter forms, fonts, puzzles, or mosaics will really enjoy it too. It's an easy way to learn. and even if you've never experimented with type before, you will be able to create something amazing today! Best of all, you can apply what you learn today in any design package, from Procreate and Adobe, to Affinity ... and beyond. Good typography can take years to master, but it doesn't need to be intimidating. Welcome to a super fun class all about letters!
2. How Do Letters Work?: When I was about five years old, I remember being fascinated by the capital letter A on my favorite cap. It just looked different than what we were being taught about alphabet letters at school. The A on my cap had little feet. I now know these are called Serifs. In fact, I'm a little bit geekier than that. This was the font Stencil, designed by R. Hunter Middleton for the Ludlow brand of machines back in 1937. To create Stencil, Middleton adapted an Egyptian style typeface, adding little breaks between the letters in order to mimic the kind of rapid labelling used on boxes and crates of the time. So the logo on my cap was a deliberate choice by the graphic designer to convey a bold, masculine and aggressive tone. It just screams "army". Alone or together, letters us can communicate just about anything based on how they're presented. This is important for you to consider when designing your personal monogram. How will it represent your personal brand? What will you communicate about you? or what you want others to perceive about you? Now we're going to talk about the same alphabet letter done in three different styles and examine their differences. The first one is quite rudimentary, but something we're going to learn in a later lesson about how to kinda space these pieces out. But this looks like an O and an I if its in its own context, If you don't see these, you see an a. But if it's with anything else, it looks like an O and an I So it's saying, "OI!". It's a little bit weird. This is very geometric. It's actually a capital letter, so it should go a little taller. And we've started out as did a little bit here. So it's got a lot of nice symmetry there. It looks very strong and it looks very stable. This is an A taken from a local brand that we have and it's part of the name. And what's funny is, if you just see it by itself, it's possibly a very stylized a, it's quite spacey and futuristic. In their name, it lives in the middle of the brand and it actually changes a very normal harmless word into quite a rude word. So they've since addressed that and actually just added in a little piece on like that. So it's 100% not an "O", as it looks in their logo. So you get the idea here. There's this many different ways you can approach the same thing. But we're already learning a valuable lesson yet. For our monogram, which is going to be made up of more than one letter, There's something of a relationship between the lette's where we can't just always do the same thing this next to something else. It could unintentionally make a whole new word, which is neither a monogram and could have unexpected consequences like this local brand that talks about. Let's try one more and we're just going to add a little bit more style and flair to this one. But you're going to see this as a different kind of lowercase a. So take a look at that. That's a lot cleaner for an a. And that's actually what our local friends with that problematic a (that looked like an O) did. They just changed it to this kind of classic lowercase a, and then made some decisions on what to keep, like a hard corner radius. versus just having something friendlier on the edge there. So that's the personality starting to come through. It's more clearly an a, compared to the final example we saw of the three before. But it's also starting to just soften a bit then become a little bit more friendly. So we start to see the difference when we're just talking about a single letter as part of a monogram. There's oodles of personality coming out of some of them, especially these two. And these two are less successful for the reasons discussed. In the next lesson, we'll look at the anatomy of type, the framework that keeps all letters proportional, as well as the different modular parts that make up certain letters. I'll see you there!
3. The Anatomy of Type: Now let's take a high-level look at type anatomy. Understanding the basic construction of letters helps us decide what to keep, and what to omit, when we customise them. Firstly, there's a framework that contributes to groups of letters being easy to read and understand. It's based on the height of the lowercase x in any alphabet. This is the x-height. Its measured from the baseline, which is what the x sits on, up to the top of the letter itself. And I've used different colours here to demonstrate things that go outside of that general x-height You've got a descender, and that's for any letter that breaks the baseline , and goes down below. Ascenders break the x-height and go above, like the top of this k and this h. Continuous vertical parts like this are called the Stroke of the letter. When letters start to take that tangent of a radius like the n or the h, That's called the Shoulder of the letter. When there's a double tangent like we see on an S here, that's known as the Spine. This is a very agreeable looking A I've made here, but you understand that a capital A normally ends in a point at the top. that would be known as the Apex. I've marked out in white, all the joins of these letters. This horizontal bar is called the Crossbar, linking the two sides of the A together. On letters like b or p, when you've got that rounded part? That's called the Bowl. We talked about serifs on my favorite cap when I was a kid. and I've tried to show them here. And that's anytime a font has little embellishments that hang off the edges. On an old-fashioned g, We often see this big shape coming off the bottom, below the baseline. This is called the Loop and on letters like an F, which have many things branching off. The straight vertical piece is called the Stem. And on letters like Q, this little piece that comes off here, is called the Tail. In this lesson, we learned about the x-height and baseline the invisible framework that supports all letters. We learned that anything that protrudes above the x-height is called an Ascender. Anything that breaks well beyond the baseline is a Descender. We also learned the names for different parts of certain letters. And there's one more I forgot to add! See that little hole in the p, the g and the b? on letters, that's called the Counter. So far we've seen the major advantage of letters constructed from modular parts. They're really easy to adjust, modify, and personalise. Now, let's take a look at a few modular alphabets.
4. About Modular Alphabets: What's a modular alphabet when it's at home? Well, that's what this lesson is about. We're gonna look at a few different examples that I've collected, which show excellent use of modular construction of letters across an entire alphabet. That's gonna give you inspiration for your projects. You will see your name in there, or whatever you're making for your project. You'll see alphabet letters with different personalities shining through depending on what's been omitted, what additions have been made, using the same exact modular parts. So here we have four distinctly different alphabets that I've collected, that have one thing in common: In that they're all modular. The designers have decided to use a certain amount of parts, and generate a whole alphabet from those parts. So let's go in for the first one. This is called ARC, by Anna Pulido What I really like about this, is it's really easy to read and it's got quite a fun flowing feel to it because of the frequent use of this kind of macaroni piece. tTere are some difficult cases that I don't think would work on their own, S and Z, for example. But this is a pretty successful font all in and of itself. From a modular perspective, there were some liberties taken with certain letters. If you look at that shorter kind of tangent on the L, the T, and the Q I wouldn't personally consider this a truly modular font because I do see where Anna had difficulty using those same modular parts and had to divert in order to use something custom and make it work. The superbly named Modular Font by John Rushing is a great example of something that can be achieved with just a few of the same modular parts. This is something I think I could easily make out of these Lego DOTS, and it's got a strong stencil look as well, which is interesting. That would be something you would get no matter how you are making this. If you built this out of the vector shapes. or if you build this out of Lego, you would always kinda see those join lines. But we can see this is mostly built on that little pizza shape, either butted up or inverted. And he's used that for everything from the strokes to the bowls of each letter. So a very cool one, very successful. Um, completely lowercase worth noting. Blocks & Blocks by Matthew Wahl is, at first glance, probably what completely inspired Lego DOTS to be made in the first place. This is three blocks high, which is worth noting. What that limits you to is - I mean, it gives you more opportunity with uppercase letters. It does make lowercase a little trickier, because you're All in all, very successful. This is one of the only ones I've seen where it's uppercase and lowercase. But I do think, again, there's some liberties taken with the modular approach. Where if you look at the lowercase a, lowercase e, et cetera, there's a funny little pinched shape, which is not a natural shape. It's sort of an intersection of two further simplified pizza shapes. So that challenge that Matthew had as a designer would be the same challenge that you would have as well in creating something like this where, f you see those letters individually, maybe they're not going to all work together. I think what's worth noting here If you look at the U and the V, just look at those two lowercase ones. Now imagine you couldn't see one or the other. You probably wouldn't be able to tell on its own if it was a U or V. That's the challenge you can have with something like this. Finally, we've got Ramd by Frank Vogt. Now this is, Frank has done this for a professional type foundry. It's a complete experiment. It's one of many modular fonts that the foundry has made. So this is a professional typographers approach. This is four blocks high so there's a lot of room to play. What's interesting here is the uppercase is fairly widely spaced. Whereas the lowercase now has to be very condensed to answer to this system. So if you are making a complete word in a sentence case where it starts with a capital and goes into lowercase. I'm not convinced that they would work together. So you're kinda looking at two separate alphabets. Yeah, I think you could use it exclusively uppercase, or exclusively lowercase. Now, can I please draw your attention? if you can follow along ... A, B, C, D, E, F once you get to G, we kind of fall off the map. I think maybe if this had been set up with a bit more space in-between each alphabet letter, we could possibly tell what was going on there, but it just, at the moment to you, to me, probably just looks like a mash of little geometric shapes. As it's a professional foundry. I have to say that what they were going for here as a concept, is a very brutalist approach, where it's got to look mechanical and unforgiving. So, it does kind of communicate that it looks almost like it's been assembled by a machine that got a bit confused and couldn't put that human touch, that human emotion into it to go: "I care about what people think when they see this" and, "I'm not sure they're going to understand what I'm saying when they see that". You can see across the four using pretty much the same, similar shapes, vastly, vastly different results. Lastly, these Lego DOTS, these sets actually come with a little page that gives you a few different modular alphabets. So we'll have a look at them quickly. This very bold one, I was excited about, but you can probably see by the height of it that it uses an incredible amounts of parts. So it's not so practical for your monogram. I mean, whether you're using Lego, whether you're making this out of vectors
or whatever you are doing They're just gigantic. And they're also very dense and bold, so they look great as an alphabet. It's very cohesively designed. I just don't know that it's going to be easy to merge any of these. This one has a lot of personality and I do like something about it. Reminds me of a lot of western fonts that used to be around. I mean, not like a cowboy looking font, but just that it has that personality of advertising of the time. This is probably the most standard one. You'll see there's a lot of evidence of this since 2016. You can find a lot of that on Pinterest. Of when the modular alphabet explosion began in design, and it remains to this day. These are full blocks high for capitals, Three blocks high for lowercase. And there are still the same challenges here. If you look at the complete alphabet and you read along with it, it makes a lot of sense as to what these letters are. But I think if you just look at the U, for example, and that V there, and you couldn't see one or the other. I think be very difficult to tell which one was meant to be which. This last one is super exciting! It's a very specific design. You'd call this a display typeface. You wouldn't use this to do long passages of text or huge headlines for a movie or anything like that. This is a 100% ornamental. This is to be used for a big word or a real punchy kinda name for something. So again, nice inspiration for the monogram. I do think it's got a skeletal quality for me, so I don't think it's intended to be that its actually think it's intended to have a lot of flair with these serifs, the way they've done those curves. But I do like that. I would probably use that for a monogram for someone in a band, or somebody who likes a certain kind of music, or certain kind of darker TV show. That's got a real skeletal quality to it. So, yeah, check all of these out further inspiration for what we've been talking about for your monogram. In this lesson, by looking at modular alphabets, we discovered something interesting. Not all letters are created equal. There are some that require the context of other letters in order to be understood at all. V is one that comes to mind. In almost every modular alphabet we looked at. From ones designed by professional type foundries, to ones designed for kids to be able to make out of this kind of Lego, None of those V's could stand on their own. They just don't look like a V anymore, they look like a U at best. So we realized that it's about that context. They need proximity, they need relevance to things around them. And that's where the monogram comes in. In the next lesson, we're going to look at that proximity between letters, and the professional terms for how to modify them, in order to communicate different emotions. I'll see you there.
5. Learn to Kern and Track: The number one
giveaway of any logo, passage of text, or document
having been designed by a professional, is evidence
of kerning and tracking. Now what are those you might ask? Well, that's the professional terms for adding the appropriate spacing between each little letter. What does this have to
do with our monogram? We're only using 2 or 3 letters, right? Well, it's super important! By definition, a monogram should have a singular
visual appearance, but still be clearly
identifiable as having been made up by
multiple different letters. And that's where that spacing is critical. Let's check it out. With such space between them, it could be ironic, it
could make a cool graphic, but the distance between
them is too much, they look like two separate things. Let's see what happens when
we tighten the kerning. Now that looks a lot better
with them together, right? But it's still reads as a word and wouldn't
count as a monogram. Now it just looks like, ok, kinda like a
logo or something. Let's hop it over
one row by further. Now that's looking a lot better. There's kind of a
relationship going with here. See how this cancer in the middle of the
o is just one row. And it's the same for the k. That distance is proportional.
Knots are the lizards. So together they're
really working as a group that could
stand as a monogram. It's a very tall font with
a lot of personality. It's quite compressed. But let's see what
happens if we really, really tighten the kerning
and mash them up together? Now the kerning is
impossibly taught, but it's basically jarring because they've got the same
colors going through them. So they tend to blend
together in the middle. This O and this k would
see different colors. This type of really
tight Kerning would be okay for a monogram. It's also because
each of these lasers has a very strong stroke. So it's kinda like two walls butting up against each other. If there was something
with a contrast lack of v, That would work a lot better. You can really match
them together. In fact, if you look
at that little curve, they could overlap and blends for degree and that
would still look okay. Now let's talk about tracking
compared to kerning, which refers to the space
between just two letters. Tracking refers to
increasing or decreasing the average space evenly
across an entire word. It's usually only applied
to uppercase letters, especially when they're
bold or visually heavy. It's not recommended
for lowercase. And I'll show you
in a minute why. It's often used to make
a word communicates a premium offerings
such as a luxury brand. I think that extra
space is basically saying, we can afford us. Now focus on this word surf. I'm going to give it
extremely wide tracking and I think you'll agree, it's going to lose a
little bit of synergy. You can see, I mean, yes, obviously with
these geometric shapes, we are asking a lot of the reader to identify these
letters in the first place, but when they were
tightly tracks, it was quite unpleasant
treatment of the word surf. With this, I would be forced
to jump to each letter, but by the time I think he
gets to the third character, you've forgotten what
word you are looking at. So that's the most
important lesson I can teach you about tracking. It's a really special
use kind of technique. Again, it doesn't deeply
affects our monogram, but it's something to be considered when you're
working with lizards. In this lesson, we learned that the relationship between lasers, commonly called letter spacing, often requires kerning and tracking in order to be
aesthetically pleasing. And then this
majorly contributes to what the letters are
actually communicating. In the next lesson,
it's finally time to design your own monogram.
I'll see you there.
6. Designing Your Own Monogram: Welcome back. It's time to design your
own personal monogram. In this lesson,
we're going to apply everything we've learned
in the previous lessons. So a number of different
alphabets solutions. We're going to consider all the alphabets that we've looked at. We're going to
consider everything we learned about kerning
and tracking. And we're going to look at
good examples of overlapping, pairing and modifying
letters to create your name, your family name, something
important to you. Let's go. So I've set up a number
of options here. And basically, what we need to look at
is the hearts of them, each modular pieces one block tall at whatever scale
you're working at. So we're looking at seven plus
blocks and hot these four blocks tall for these
three here and two there. These are what
you'll most commonly see for lowercase letters. Uppercase letters are usually in the fall blocks high range, and then inserts and
very ambitious fonts flux on the module
alphabets we looked at. They're probably going close
to it as tall as these. And I wouldn't say one has is easier than
another to work with. But certainly what you get
is this gets to be fancy. You can do more techniques the taller and bigger than it is on. And then these ones tend to limit you to certain
alphabet letters. You might want to think about the alphabet as
you're going to use your monogram when you
considering a hot to work as. Let's take a look at
the big guys forest. So this first one,
I wonder if you can see what that's
supposed to be. Just so we understand
clearly off the bat, there's an a, there's an are joined together
by a common stroke. I'm going with a stencil
type design where I've cut certainties
is out of the lasers. But the reason these will be
able to join together more successfully than the okay that we did in the
previous lesson, is that they share
something in common, which is this stroke
is vertical PCR. But on opposite sides. They have counselors
and bowls and things that are bursting out
some changing shapes. So we're not gonna
get it confused as three literals or
something like that. What's extra nausea
is we've kind of got a mirror effect going on. If we come over to this one, this is a particularly
custom option and by contrast is
actually just mono line, meaning every block has
the same thickness. It's not changing per liter. There's no preference
for which of these is the capital in which
is the lowercase. But can you see
what's happening? This looks like a capital B, but it's actually a P
nested inside of B. That's something very interesting
you can do if you find similarities between the two
letters that you're using. Taking the stencil
concepts a little further by chopping out the
spines of these indices. If you have two litters that are exactly the
same alphabet Lisa, you can start to make more
of a pattern with them. We've got here. And just to add some variety
I've played with color. And I've also used two dots to suit little circles in
the same colors that I'm using just to balance out
the design so that it doesn't feel like it's leaning to one side or
anything like that. Then over here, I wonder
if you recognize this. We've looked at this before. Let me just take this little
piece away. That's okay. Except now the k is actually borrowing the whole shape
of the o as its stroke. If I've done this
all in one color, I think it would look
like a very fancy k. But by kinda differentiation
we get that, that's supposed to be
two different lenses. And the piece I hadn't the earlier shows you that
with one edition of the same modular
piece that suddenly a Q and a k. So we've got an
interesting name there. Overall, it's pushed a
little further than anything we saw in the modular
alphabets where it's very, very condensed. So we're only going to block swat on the widest
character there. And that's giving it
some sort of elegance. But at the expense of
being elegance and can also look a little horsey, a little too good for itself,
a little egotistical. So think about what you want to portray if you go for
something like this, this one has a ton
of fun to create. It got me thinking the two
different thicknesses, these two bucks wider
than one block wide, if I could do that
all in one liter. So this isn't really a monogram. This is for someone
who's maybe you go to very proud family name or
goes by first-name only. And you could just go all in on a very creative single letter. This is a lowercase t, but just we balanced
it out there. We've done a real
strong crossbar there. And we've emitted
that one there. And we'll just use
this double roots and bring it up so it's big
and bold and withstand grades as a kind of modern feminist or even a great
little personal brand. Moving on steroids. These are all full blocks
high and you will see a lot of modular
alphabets used for blocks toll fall the capsule
is as we saw that in the following examples of
the modular alphabet lesson, it's also something these legacy It's recommend for
capital leases. But it's not to
say you shouldn't go bigger or smaller than that. But then a quite
different depending on which way we swing
these modular shapes. So there's that same A&R, although that's another case and that's a capsule, it works fine. It's got a certain elegance
that I wanted to portray. I wasn't looking
for at Maria fits. I just wanted to
look like you can trace it with your finger. It gives it some, some
feeling of sophistication. So we say, you'll find in an alphabet there's a
lot of letters that have the sensor crossbars, so you'll see it in
an uppercase a and R If etc, in E as well. And it's nice to census
just merge those together. This is an if going into an R and I wanted to keep
it very modular, didn't want it to be the same. Shapes to kind of meld together
like the previous one. We just want to show
that they can eat it. And the reason we're using
color to differentiate them is because these
two particular lessons, if they were all
in the same color, I would probably just
look like a three-legged are compared with this one. This is quite ambitious. This is three
different alphabet. This is a T and an OH. What this is doing is
these leases on nested, so the nesting into each other. The S and the O on
the same baseline, t is dropping just below
that baseline and nesting in-between the others
and we're even being quite confidently about
overlapping them. Again, color separation is critical here to show the
difference between the lessons. Now what about getting
creative with color? Instead of using It's
a differentiated lists as we're actually getting some energy and some Personality
out of these lasers. So we've got an ace and a k, again, made out of very
functional shapes. But across the monogram
there's a lot of consideration that's been given his observance, the colors. So there's a fair percentage of yellow and equal
percentage of blue. And the red is very
purposely put to show the diagonal waiting
here, this one here, and this one did just add a little bit of
something random, but it looks like a fun logo
for a very colorful person. Presses a brand
that does something interesting and adds
value to somebody. I definitely wanted
to add this one here. I have my son himself. So then oh, maybe you're
working with a C, something like a C and an O. There's not a lot you can
do within fundamentally, they just saw that shape. If you are stuck with this, I got to thinking about what
could go in between that. Let me just take a quick. You're working with a C and
with color we're going on a Latins going down to the full saturation
of its own color. And a thought that adding an, a shape like that that could
stand for a person who radiates confidence or radiates joy or spirituality or
something like that. And I also love this
nutrient aspect. Now the shape hugs around there. Now I'm looking
at the ROI that's three blocks tool is still a lot of fun that
can be had here and we're going to see a lot of
the same things we've been seeing like nesting and overlapping and customization
of lesser forms. So this would be a y
in the set much the same alphabets as the
anion that we saw, then you could also go
with something like a J. One of my most popular 36 days of top posts was just
a simple data AI. And all they used was kinda like this to make it look like it was something organic growing with a little
flower at the top. And that really
resonated with people. So I, perhaps you
have green fingers, perhaps you are the kind
of person who's drawn to nature or who wants to promote
the benefits of nature. This is a great
solution for you. Here's an owner, Jay, and I definitely want to use
a gradation of color yet. So we've got the deepest
my saturated red go into an orange getting lots and lots of through
all the yellows. So this is starting to animate
a little bit on its side. You've got this j coming down and getting a little sweet
drop and kicking up. A lot of what I've been collecting on
Pinterest that I find fascinating is monograms
that only use two shapes. And I was fascinated with
how a single circle shape, just the ubiquitous dots who
go along way to representing either a stroke or these
crossbars or even an arm. There was another idea alone, someone who might have
two of the same lesser, instead of them just
being next to each other. So it looks like
it's hats it out. You can nest them and that's obviously just talking
right under there. And there's something warm
and a vintage about this one. I think Andrew dancer array with just two bucks
tool to play with. And this is definitely a space that most
module alphabets plan. We saw a lot of this in the examples of the alphabets that we looked at it earlier. And this is definitely watts LIGO aiming
for with these sets. Funny enough, I don't think
it makes anything easy. It's actually quite challenging. Definitely suits
suddenly it is and you start getting the idea of Destiel Bauhaus articular
coming through these letters. Now interestingly, I was able to collect a lot of
references on Pinterest where these are real brands
at j and the k and j and a b. And I think when you
are modifying a fonts, so down to its
fundamental shapes. So Dan's these modular shapes. You can have a lot of fun with
a balanced Logo that just really only needs
for modular pieces to say what it's going to say. This is 1.5 of a real
brand out there. What are really
lots about this is that both characters of the M and the N using exactly
the same modular pieces, but they communicate
to different places. Because these are facing ALS
and these are facing in. Something you might
find challenging with this two blocks tool is doing multiple letters unless
they specifically overlapping and combined
into a single form. I made these sometime before recording and I can't really tell without
was intended to be, but only that I was trying to use colors
to separate them. So I think what I was going
for here is that the w, That's a W overlapping with an R. And I was trying
to look like it literally was that
yellow overlapping that Watson getting that pasty
it's found in between. Then here we haven't used, I've tried to build one all in the same color to show
you guys why it's so important to sometimes use color to differentiate your letters. This is a W and that's an m. Now because they both fluid organic shapes and they
both three blocks wide, they do merge into each other. And as fun as this is, it's equivalent to something like a modular death metal logo. You can't really read
exactly what's going on. Now, I've got a little surprise. I really wanted to go with
something, minimalists. I think a lot of
these are very flashy and very colorful and vibrant and that's
not for everyone. You might be someone
who considers yourself more refund and
prefers more minimal branding. So check this out.
Just one roots all. Now this is not going to
see everybody's name. You can see this is actually only nine of the
alphabet letters. I'm pretty much sticking to
just three geometric shapes. From left to right.
We've got an a, c, d, m, n, o, u, v, w. And you start to
get the idea here. Any of the vowels could go in between some of
these consonants and you would get a beautiful
little minimalist word. You can also stack
and four-by-four and have a beautiful
little blocky logo.
7. My Project: And now, a little look at my take on
personal monograms. So these are some
options I've designed. The colors don't
come into it yet. These are not my colors. But I'm taking a Graphic
Designer's approach where I would start kind
of in grayscale, no color, so that I
don't get too swayed. I can actually look
at the options all alongside each other, and just see which way I'm
getting pulled. A couple of ways of
looking at the P. There's obviously a
fundamental way there. This one is going
a bit more leafy. I did a second one here because I had the idea that I might be able to add some color
in there, bursting out And then, without
it being closed we could have a bit
more of a scripty kind of P with that one there. And I was pretty
happy with those. They all had a
feeling of direction and a feeling of flow and
being joined together. The O, I explained previously, it's difficult with
letters like O they just have
to be a round ball. But I did start playing
with an idea for an O here where I could add
these little pieces in to kind of extend it and square
it off a bit And that's when the
final idea hit me. Check this out! Essentially, the P is inside the O and I'm just using negative space
to make that up. And you can see, minimal
use of modular parts. I'm getting two letters out
of one shape, basically. And I realized once I
had the shape down, once I had something I was really, really happy with, I could start playing with color,
and then it hit me. Why can't it be all these colors? I don't need to just
have one color! I have many modes, many
moods that I'm in. So anytime I'm
using one of them, I'll have the perfect
monogram ready for it. I'm not really a
huge fan of red, but the mustard yellow
on this background is just kicking off a vintage
vibe that I really like. It speaks to the kind of
things I like to collect and the good times prior, childhood
days and things like that. I did another one which
speaks to the DIY side of me. I like to roll up my
sleeves. I like to get involved So this yellow on this gray reminds me of power tools and construction,
and things like that. I had to have a
summer sports mode. This is for sportswear,
this is for the beach, this is full of energy It's a luminous color. It has no shame,
it's flamboyant. I'd like to be that
way sometimes. And finally, I had to
have a winter version. Sometimes, something just about a stark little bit of white on a big field of black just
really does it for me. And this is quite practical for any kind of logo or brand. You often have to reduce it down to its most simple values. So that's my project. I'm really excited about it. If you
want to see it in detail, just click on the Projects
and Resources tab below. And I can't wait to see what
you're gonna do with yours. Cool! Next up, just some final thoughts about everything
we've learned so far. I'll see you there.
8. Final Thoughts: And that's a wrap! Thank you guys so much
for taking the class. I hope you've had fun. I do hope you'll try and make
your own personal monogram. This is a super fun and easy way to get into
typographic design. And it's a great,
foundational way to understand what
it's like to be, a specialist Graphic Designer. Even if that's not your goal, It's just a nice
basic skill to have. I see a lot of people
who aren't in the creative field, who do want to have just a peek in there and just be part of it,
and feel included. And something about
just giving yourself a basic personal brand can go a long way
to fulfilling that. Please hop over to my channel and give me a follow
to check out all my other classes here on Skillshare and to be the first
to know about any new ones. Cheers!
Paul Oxborrow, Graphic Designer & Illustrator
