Transcripts
1. Introduction: If you haven't met me yet, I'm Mel for mailman Z design. I've been doing calligraphy for about 30 years in
teaching for about ten. So in this class, I'm hoping
to create a quick version of the process that I use for my in-person classes to help
people find their style. If you are a new, new beginner to lettering
or haven't lettered at all. I would suggest that
you take a class, like my faux calligraphy class before you take this class. So you can get a little bit
of lettering under your belt. Class and the class project. So since I know that you all know how to use
a brush pen, right? And you all know your
basic strokes because you practice them all
the time. I'm sure. You know, your upstroke,
your downstroke, all your turns in your loops, you know all that
you've been practicing. So we're going to take all
those basic skills and we're going to turn them into
your signature font. Most students
aren't empowered to do this because they
think that they're supposed to copy and this
holds back your development. So I say hurry and develop your signature font so that
you can grow and develop. I'm not going to tell you what your alphabet should look like. You're going to decide
that and what's your hand naturally wants to do. But I'm here to help. I'm going to offer suggestions as we go through the alphabet. But in the end, you're going to decide what your
font looks like. And if you've done that today, then you have completed
the class project. Finding your style can be frustrating and even at
times feel impossible. My goal is to help you
avoid all that anxiety by showing you my process for teaching people how
to find their style. By the end of this class, you will have created
your own signature style that will feel natural
and easy to use. So let's ditch the struggle
and go get started.
2. Two Important Things: There are two important
things that I need to tell you about that are at
the core of how I teach. And this is probably going to be the most important thing that I say throughout this
entire course. So the first one is, you will have more
success if you embrace your own handwriting as you
learn modern calligraphy. And number two is creating
your signature font. Instead of copying other
people's lettering, will develop your skills quicker than you could
have ever imagined. Let me quickly
explain what I mean and how it relates
to our lesson today. First, let me talk about
embracing your own handwriting. Since the first time you
picked up a pencil as a child and learned
how to write, your hand was inclined to
move in a certain way, and this resulted in your unique handwriting when you fight your natural inclination, this can bring confusion
and frustration. Second is creating
your signature font. So when you combine the rules of calligraphy with what your
hand naturally wants to do, you create your signature font. And your signature
font is unique to you, just like your handwriting is. Don't get me wrong.
I love how inclusive the lettering
community is and how freely we share our ideas. But there will be a time
for you to borrow from other letters once you have
developed your skills. And this is the
foundation of how I teach and what we are going
to be diving into today. It's time for you to meet Oscar. Oscar is my signature
style, and as you can see, it's kinda wild, little
bit of a crazy guy, but I love him dearly. So the reason I wanted
to introduce you to Oscar is because many, many years ago when I was creating my own signature style, I was in the throes
of frustration as I was trying to learn
modern calligraphy. I have come from a traditional
calligraphy background where everything
had to be perfect and there was an
exact way to do it. And I kept falling back into that and getting really
frustrated about it. And so I would practice
and practice and all these practice papers
would end up in the trash. And so that's where
Oscar got his name. Because Oscar always
ends up in the trash. And I know that super cheesy now because this was
like 20 years ago. But I still would never change it because it's a big part of my personal journey and how
I've gotten here today. One final thing I need to say about Oscar before
we get started is Oscar has changed countless times over the
last couple of decades. And by no means was this refined when I first
created it 20 years ago, your signature font is going
to change and grow to. So today is about
discovery and inquiry, and it's not about perfection. So keep that in mind
and let's get started.
3. Step 1 Part 1, A - F: All right, everyone, let's
get started with step one. In step one, we
are going to take our own handwriting
and we're going to turn it into brush lettering. The first thing I want
you guys to do is to grab your project paper. I'm going to have mine in landscape orientation because I tend to write a little bit bigger and I want to
have room later for when we get to the brush,
brush lettering part. So I'm gonna be using tom
bows twin tone marker. I love the little felt-tip end. So go ahead and grab
your brush pen or your dip pen yet grab
your monoline pen. And at the top of
your project paper, Let's go ahead and write. This is my normal handwriting. And you don't have to write it. Nicer or worst. However you would write today. Writing. It looks about right? So at this point, let's go ahead and put
away our monoline pens. And we are going to grab
our brush pens and we're going to turn our handwriting
now into brush lettering. Let's grab a piece
of practice paper. If you want to set your
project paper aside, you can do that or
if you want to have your handwriting to
look at, that's fine. But grab your brush pen. Now, whichever one
you want to use, Wanted to reorient
myself a little bit. So hopefully you guys can see me writing a little bit better. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna go and we're going to take each of these letters
with our brush pen, and we're just going
to finesse them a little bit until we find
something that we'd like. We're probably going to use several pieces of
practice paper, so just be prepared for that. But let's start
with the letter a. So as you can see, I don't know how you
guys write your A's, but I have a tendency
to write my a this way. And I don't actually
care for that that much. As far as like calligraphy goes. Just the look, I don't
like this kind of a, necessarily for my calligraphy. But let's go ahead and
play with some ideas. So this is how I would
probably normally write it. Zero. Some of my A's are there
isn't a pretty in-line. So maybe try it in a different shape and see if you can find a different
shape that you like. Or if there's another way, there are several
letters like our z, those type of letters
that can be written in different ways also. So try some different
ways of writing that you're a and I want you to just try several different ways. Whatever comes to mind. I was like leaf, but maybe I don't connect the
top and bottom. Maybe I make it really round. In a really round with a tail. There's all kinds of
things you can do. So go ahead and spend a few, a few minutes, whatever. Pause the video if
you want to just write out several A's. And then once
you've written out, I would say three to ten A's. Go back through. I haven't really written
very many that I like, but I'm go back through and my lettering stairwell and see which ones you like
and don't like. So this is still the
point I wanna make two is this is still
my handwriting, even though I'm finessing it a little bit and it's
very sloppy today, which is perfect for
what we're doing. So look at each of your A's and notice which ones you
like and you don't like. So what I like to do
when I'm creating a font is I let her in a certain
way and we'll get to why. You'll understand why
here in a little bit. But I write the
letter a lot of times and how I think I might
like it and maybe some different
variations of that. And then I go through
and pick my favorite. So when I'm creating a
font icon usually have an idea of what I want
the font to look like. So I'll write it, how I think I might
want it to look, but then I'll also write some
that aren't how I liked to. Maybe want to, want
it to look better, you know, sparking my
imagination, I guess. So. Now that we've done that, go through and I honestly, you don't have to
do it like I do, but I cross out the
ones I don't like. Um, I actually like, I don't mind the
disconnection here, but this just came out bad and I just don't
want to look at it. So cross out the
ones you don't like. This one's barely
calligraphy and then circle the ones
you do like an, I actually thought these little chunky guys came out cute. But this one is
definitely more my style. So some of them I don't
do anything with if I'm indifferent and I kind of like this even though
I didn't do the top, how I probably would. So once you've done
that and you're honing in a little
bit on what you like, maybe see what you
like about it. This little chubby
guy is real cute. I like the separation
right here. So just notice those
kind of things. And when this is very
Oscar, this one is. So that's why I'm
inclined to that one. If you need to do a
couple more examples like maybe I do want to see a chunky one disconnected or something like that
with the lower part, the lower I call them tails. The lower tail,
something like that. Maybe try a few more,
but finalize and hone in on which one
is your favorite. And just note that now that
you guys know how this goes, we're going to move a
little bit quicker, but we are going to go
through the whole alphabet together just so that I can show you maybe a few different variations
of each letter. So you're welcome to pay attention to how I'm
doing it or you just go ahead and just dive
in and get started and you can fast-forward
this part if you want to. You don't want to listen
to me. He ever on. So moving on to be my normal be definitely
it looks like that. So I'll rewrite that guy. And then some other
ideas obviously would be to loop this guy, make an ascending loop. I could also create a little
more distance here too. So maybe I push out my
little bubble part of my B. Maybe I do the both. Maybe I do in ascending loop
and also push out to be. Maybe I create my B
with an exit stroke. Or what else would
we want to do? Maybe my B is super
Kirby, super curvy be. And how would I want to, maybe I come back out from the bottom. So all different
things that you can do with your b. I think I'm going
to try one more loopy one. I didn't really like that loop. Maybe we do a little
loop on our B, or we try a big loop for
being a little baby bubble. All kinds of things you can do. Then again, go back through and just note
the ones you like. I actually do. I
don't mind this one. That was kinda fun. This is probably more what
I would be inclined to do. Actually do kind
of like this one. That was kinda fun to do that. Not normal for me, but I liked it and it's
still my handwriting. I'm noting which ones I like. And then I'm gonna
go ahead and pick a favorite and I am having a hard time picking, let's see. I'm gonna go with this
one is my favorite. And now we'll do our C. C
is pretty straightforward. But you could do like a little entry stroke with your c is an idea also how
you exit out of your C. Maybe your Cs are
nice and round. Or maybe I have this. I don't know why I call
it a kickstand sometimes, but I had this tail that kind
of kicks up a little bit. If there was a bike right
here, it could be a kickstand. I don't know why I'm drawing
a bike. I'm so sorry. You guys say anyways,
you get the idea. So how you exit. So you could have different
differences that way. Maybe you put a little
loop on the top of your C, or maybe you put a big loop on your C, something like that. So try several Cs about try
ones that feel normal to, I'm kinda getting a
little bit crazy. Maybe oh yeah. Maybe you're seeing is
very tall and skinny. Or maybe it's like we've
already done really round. So try all those
and then go back through and see which one's
kind of felt more natural. This one definitely
felt natural for me. Probably this one even though I hate that transition
right there, but I would say that
felt really normal. I think this guy is really cute. I actually kinda like,
Yeah, they're fine. I don't really like
any of these with these like little hats on top. And then go ahead and
pick your favorite. So we're doing that. And then we're moving
on to D. So I wrote my d, like that ish. So what are some other
things we could do? Another ascending loop? I don't usually do that. That was interesting. I could do an ascending loop. We could do a little bubble, or we could do a tall
little loop on our D. So those are some variations. We could do a little bit
of an ascending loop. Why do I keep doing that? Sorry guys. A little baby, ascending
loop is an option. We could do a great big one too. Maybe we do a little
tiny circle with a great big ascending
loop, something like that. So some ideas, but go
ahead and do some more Ds. I'm going to try to
do some days I'd actually feel normal to me, Something like that. Okay. Then once you that was a disaster go through and I don't know why I was
trying to do those backwards. That's so abnormal. I really don't like
how that came out. But kinda go through
pick your favorites. And then I'm picking
this guy as my favorite. And probably what I would do, I also do like this guy, although this one,
well, I like them both. But anyways, so pick your favorite and we're just
going to keep on going. So now let's move to E
and E is to me like C, but there are some options. So that's probably what
feels normal for me. You can make it taller, ie you can make a
round, round E. I mean, it could have
an entrance loop if you wanted it to. Something like that. You could do a flat
if you wanted to, if that's your E, That
is certainly acceptable. So do some more 0s until you until you feel
like you've tried. Oh yeah, You could also do your more classic E and then go back over and
see which ones you like. I think I really like this one that was
actually really fun. This is definitely my normal
ie and felt comfortable. So see what you like and
would like to duplicate, but also what felt natural to. So keep that in mind. This was actually kind of fun. I wouldn't normally do that, and this was actually
kinda fun too. But I would pick this e as far as something that
felt normal for me to do, but also looks fine, looks good then for F. So I did my f like this. But we certainly could
do a more cursive f. Or maybe it's just on the top. Looped on the top. You could do a big
loop on the top. You could do big top, little bottom, and vice versa. I'm trying to think
of more of this type. I don't know, That's
pretty straightforward, but try some Fs, maybe some different ways, but also don't forget do them that feels
normal like this. This feels normal to me. But maybe give them
a little bit of a variation and then go back
and pick your favorites. I definitely like that one. That one is a look that I like. This one was pretty cute
but didn't feel as normal. I mean, I think you can
see I have a pretty consistent f and I
struggle with f's, so I'm going to pick this guy. Oh, we're off screen.
I'm so sorry. So moving up. G is next. Sorry about that You guys.
5. Step 1 Part 3, R - Z: Okay, R, so R has
lots of variations. So I did this are like this, who obviously have the R that
comes up in an upstroke. And then I've seen titers in
my head. That's not right. Tiers down. You could add a
little loop here. So maybe you have
an r like that. You could have a big loop. So try several r's. And you can do. This totally counts too, just whatever you would
feel natural doing. And then again, go back
and pick your favorites. I like all of these, but I would probably pick
these as my favorites. Then pick that one. And then S, I have an unusual S, So this will be interesting,
but you could do, I did it like this. You could do your S with
a upstroke. Whoops, whoo. One of these guys. You could do your S like this. But have it maybe come
around like that. That looks a little funky,
like that one better. But try some different essays. I tend to make my S's like this. See, I'm trying to think of
other S is for you guys. But I guess I should probably
do some normal ones. So do some Ss and then go
back and pick your favorites. I actually like that one. I don't usually do that, but that I could make that happen. Now like this one. This
is the one I would pick. And now let's do, oh, sorry guys, I am
failing feeling. So let's do T and it's
pretty straightforward. It can be this. Give it a little tail. You could cross it up high, cross it down lower. You can do entrance stroke
with it if you want to. You could cross it at an angle. Those types that you can
give it a little swirl. So try a few and then
pick your favorite. I think I tend to do this. And you oh, that's not
close to how I did it, but anyways, I did
it more like this. But you could create some
space here which is kinda fun. You could also stagger it. So maybe your normal
you looks like this. You could try it like with this part higher or vice versa. And then pick your favorite. I think I like that one. I do like that one, but I'm
gonna go with this one. Okay, almost there gang. So V, I did mine like this
and it's kind of wild. A V can also have a real
tight transition like that. Think of your exit stroke. I tend to do mine like that. It could be wider
or tall and skinny. You can loop it. Kinda fun things you could add. So go through, pick
your favorite. I'm not going to fit all my
letters on here clearly. I think I like that one. And then I mean, I don't usually do my skinny
but I'll circle that one. I think that when
it came out good. And the wider, actually
like all of these, they're fine. Okay. One more piece favor. We're on w. So I did mine. Pretty sloppy like this. So obviously we
could do it a lot nicer with a couple
of under turns. You could do some under turns. With a little bit
of a exit stroke. You can loop that exit
stroke like we were just doing with our RVs. You could do straight W's. Again. Oops. Do what feels natural for you? That was my normal. I don't know if you could
tell it was pretty smooth. And then pick your favorite. This one's my favorite. But this one was fun. And then we'll do x. And I had done my end just like that. You can obviously do like
compound curves style x. I'll do that a little better. I think wider or tall. You could do your S curve x. So try a few Xs and then go through and pick the
ones you'd like actually should do more spine and then pick your favorite. I don't have a favorite x, but I guess I'm gonna
go with this one. And then why? I love, why is there so fun? So I did this y
like this. I guess. You could stagger again. So maybe you make
the descending loop a little bit taller, or you make the first
underturn taller. You could give it not a very big tail or you
could do a great big loop. Then we're like that, or do a little baby loop. So try several y's. You could even there isn't any reason why you couldn't
do something like that? Okay. Then pick your fav
should do like that. Those two. I'm going to pick I guess I'll take that one and z. So I know z gives people
a lot of trouble. So I did my Z. One of these ways, which is totally can work. By the way it works best if
you make sure to pick up your pen like you
shouldn't be doing in brush calligraphy. But you also have the x0. That's one of these guys. Sometimes I make
the top smaller. If you wouldn't
normally do this, don't worry about doing it. Sometimes people do
their Zs like that. You could do a z that has
a tail that comes up. Kinda weird. It
looks like a seven, but you could do it and then go through and pick
your favorites. I think if I were
to actually do it, I would do it like that. Okay. So we have done
the entire alphabet. We spent a long time doing it. The next parts are really quick, but hopefully you got
some different ideas on some letters, but make sure that you've gone through and you've circled. You're not only your favorites, but the ones that
felt comfortable. So that's very important
in what we're doing. And then in the next lesson, we're going to bring this all together and create a template.
6. Step 2 - Preliminary Template: Alright everyone, the bulk
of the work is done. Yay. So now next to step to, the next thing we're gonna
do is we're going to create a preliminary template is what
I usually like to call it. And there's two ways to do this. One is you can take a piece of marker paper
or tracing paper. That's what it's called.
And you can trace your favorites and create your lettering
template that way. Or if you're a more
experienced letter, I don't tend to do this, but I definitely
highly recommend it for anyone who's
either never done this before or new to lettering or even my
intermediate students, I have them do this. So unless you are more advanced
or a professional letter, I suggest that you copy, essentially trace the
letter that you made with some sort of a marker
paper or tracing paper, something like that that you can see through is what
we're going for. If you're a more
experienced letter, if you are a professional or advanced or
anything like that, I don't tend to do that. Do that way. You could also just
have another piece of paper and just look at what you did if you're good at
duplicating your letters, you can also just
look at what you did and put it on the template. So that is the next step. It's super easy. Obviously, find the letter that you
indicated as your favorite, and then you will just
literally trace over the top of it and recreate
that letter again. There's a for me, there's my B. And if it doesn't come
out perfect, that's okay. You can try again,
just scooch it over x that one out and
do the next one. But go ahead and do that for
all of your letters until you have the whole your
whole template ID letters. And then I will meet you at the next step where
we will refine.
7. Step 3 - Analyze & Adjust: Okay, next step is to
analyze and adjust. So we've created
our preliminary, we'll call it a template
letter template. And again, it doesn't have
to be perfect at this point. So I see plenty of things that aren't perfect about the shape of my
letters and stuff. What I'm trying to do is get
an overall overview of what this lettering font is
going to look like. We're looking for
continuity in your letters. So now is your opportunity to go through and see if you
want to make any changes. So for instance,
when you're looking at what I've written
here for myself, I'm noticing that I've
got a loop to my D, but I don't to my
B-H loop to my age, don't to my k due to my l. So there's a little bit
of variation in that. A great way to test
out the cohesion of these letters together
is two, write something. I usually like to write several words so I can make sure to capture all the letters. But for this class,
just for fun, let's go back to our, this is my normal
handwriting project paper. On just below this, what
we've already written, let's write a new
sentence that says, this is brush lettering. So I'm in a letter with you. This is brush lettering. So let's get started and it doesn't again,
have to be perfect. We're just essentially we're testing this out is
what we're doing. And I'm hoping you
guys are seeing that. For those of you who
are a little newer, I know you experienced
people will know. When you are lettering. You should take probably
at least four times. I kinda say is the goal. I just screwed that
up because I'm talking, I'm gonna go with it. You guys, this is gonna
be messed up. We know it. Anyways. It should take you at
least four times as long as a goal to letter. Like lettering,
calligraphy, letter. I'm saying this so weird. Then it would for your
normal handwriting. So this should take us just a minute or
two to actually do. The more experience you have, I always have to try
to slow myself down. The more experience you have, the faster you'll go. Obviously, let her. My biggest thing is I misspell things all the
time. It's the worst. My hand there it is. Now, if I was really sticking to this letter or
this lettering font, I might ask myself. So I think if if you notice, I noticed this N, I didn't put a tail on it, which could actually work. I didn't with the you either. So you can make artistic
choice to not connect letters. And so if this was
truly going to be my letter for this font, I would not have put
a tail right here. So, or one right here, which actually I think probably would've looked interesting. So I might stop the video real quick and just let
her that out for you guys so you guys
can see the difference and maybe some of you have
already made that choice, but I'll go ahead and do
that just really quickly before we dive into
this next part. So I let her that again and didn't connect the UE or the n. And I actually think
it looks great. So I may adopt that for
this lettering font. May make that decision
to go ahead and do that and other things you
want to be looking for. Because again, we're we're doing what's comfortable for us. My normal L isn't looped and I'm fine with this type of
a b that I've created. And even my kay, maybe I want
to change this lettering up a little bit and maybe my
L's don't have loops also. So these are the decisions
that we're making now around this lettering is we're going to refine it a little bit more. Now we've had a
chance to see this. Now. Different letter
combinations obviously could make some things look good and some
things not look so good. So you might want to
test it out some more. But that's what this next phase of spores we're going to kind of think this through and
see what we might adjust. So I'm actually going to keep my non-connected u
and n with this font. But I'm wondering if I do like, I do like the Looped age, but I'm wondering if
I might like a D. That's more like maybe that makes sense to
me and my brain. And even the H and L. I actually, I actually
think that looks fine too. So maybe I don't or I could not loop any of
these because again, in my normal handwriting, I don't loop that. But am I right now you're
asking yourself, okay, I've created this letter
and I do think it's pretty, um, does it feel normal to me? So did it feel normal for me to do my age like this or not? So this is where you
make those decisions and really hone in on
what feels natural. And you may even go back to, now, That's why you
keep these around. But you may now go back to
this paper and say like, okay, I picked this L, but I did also like this l. So maybe I'll try this
one and then you can redo your lettering font, but with these other letters
and test it out again. So this is the process of
creating a letter font. You're going to just basically barf as much information
onto the page as you can. Really sort through it. See what you like, see
what you don't like. Go through and figure out
your yeses in your nose, refine it down to
your favorites. Get your favorites together
so you can see them together. Practice them a few times, or at least a couple of times. I usually like to
write, like I said, several words that
contain all the letters. Sometimes I don't worry about Z. If I'm being honest. If as
long as I'm happy with the z, I might try it and connect
it to another letter, but you just use it so rarely. Honestly, it's your phone. So if you decide this is
your final font and then you have something that you're creating and
it has a z in it, and you put it in there
and you don't like it. It's your font. Updated. Oscar has been changed
tons of times. That's totally your prerogative. But now we've tested it out. We've got our lettering. I've thought it through. I might try to change out a couple of letters
or something like that. Rewrite some lettering. But basically I've
refined it down. Let's pretend that this
is what I stuck with. That takes us to the next step.
8. Step 4 - Final Steps: Okay, So you have tested it out. You've refined your lettering and maybe made some adjustments. Tested it again and
ensured that it is the font that you
want to go forward with. So really, some of
the last things to do is I would love for you and I always do
this to name your font. So as you guys know, Oscar is my signature font. I have lots and lots of fonts and they all deserve a name. So that would be the next thing I would love for you to do. And usually what I do at
this point, like I said, I may make adjustments
or tweaks, but this font is done. So what I like to do just
to finalize everything is I will put it on a new piece
of paper with its title, name, with its name, and then put the date on it too. And then it's complete. You could also do the next
step which a lot of us do, which is to digitize them. But this class isn't about that. This class is about
creating the font. So I'm not gonna get into that, but that is essentially the
steps for creating a font. So congratulations,
you've just created your first signature font that hopefully has a name
and a date that it was born. So I hope that you have
found this to be valuable. And I really think that
this is a great tool for everyone to use and continue
to grow there lettering. Another quick note. These, all these pages where we do some experimenting
as we talked about, there was other letters in
here that I really liked. I liked to hang on to these
for awhile and keep them altogether so that when I
am creating new fonts are, or want to create a new font, I can pull out half a dozen
or so of these with a lot of that already have
experiments on them that I can kind of go off of when I'm
ready to start a new font. So that's always a little helpful tip
that I like to do it, it kinda saves time in the end, but usually when you're
creating a font, you have something in mind
that you're wanting to create. So that's the goal
of it and a style. And it's usually something different than you've
already done before. But still, I, I really
feel like these can be great inspiration
for other fonts, so I keep them around
for a little while. You could scan them into
your computer and just keep them there if
you don't want to keep the paper around. But anyways, so this is your class
project creating your font. The next thing that
we're going to talk about is what to do with
your class projects. So congrats, gang.
9. Conclusion: Thank you so much
for letting me be a part of creating
your signature font. I cannot wait to see it, and I can't wait to find
out what you named it. Please post it in
the project section. I would love to see
the first rendition. And then as it grows
and changes over time, if you would continue
to give us updates, I'd love to keep track of how your font has grown and changed. If you liked this class, I would love for you
to leave me a review. Good reviews help visibility and they help other
students find the class. Also, I'd love to have you
follow me here on Skillshare. I have lots and lots of classes
that I teach in-person. And when I see more followers, it helps me to know
that people would like me to make more
classes for Skillshare. Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you
in the next class.
Mel Manzi, Lettering Artist and Calligraphy Teacher
