Hello!

Michelle here, joining in on the fun. I'm a graphic designer and aspiring letterer. I was so happy when I saw that Martina made a Skillshare class. I follow her on Instagram and absolutely adore her work.

For this project, I wanted to include some sort of Spanglish from my city, Miami. When thinking about the phrase I was going to letter—Hey Chica—I wanted to focus on its feminine nature without being TOO girly. (Hey chica is like saying, hey girl). Here is my final result! Further below you can take a look at the process.

As I began to sketch, I knew I wanted to play with thick and thin strokes—something dramatic.

Below is a shadow version based on the above sketch.

A refining of the above sketch.

In the end, I decided to go with the shadow sketch showing depth to an absent script.

I brought my sketch into Illustrator a bit too early in the process and realized that I still had some work to do on paper before digitizing it. What ended up happening was that many of my angles were very off. I tried to make the corrections in Illustrator to "save time" but ended up with a very awkward result (I had also added a border and color to try and compensate for the strangeness but that did no good either):

I had completely lost the form of the original sketch and created a mess. There is a saying in Spanish that says, "El vago pasa mas trabajo" ...The lazy person ends up doing more work. And that is pretty much what happened to me.

So! I went back to tracing paper and finished all revisions the correct way (for me).

I first edited my monoline sketch, focusing on creating a consistent rhythm between letters—especially the C's and A all having the same rounded forms.

Then I made the shadow based on the monoline script.

The final result:

I ended up using both the monoline script and shadow together. I would love to hear some feedback from you all! There are really beautifully made projects in this class.

I also want to thank you, Martina, for providing us with really insightful tips on your design process! It truly has been helpful in my personal design process. So, thank you!

Detail shots: