Here's a peak behind the scenes at my custom type process. It all starts with sketching and ends with a slight obsession over smoothing out bezier curves in Adobe Illustrator...
First I sketch to find a combination of letterforms I like, playing around with different styles, ligatures and relationships to give the word a consistent flow.
Once I feel like I've got a winner, I will scan it in and mess with the levels in Photoshop to keep the organic textures of the brush pen.
Next I'll download a high res image and play with some layer masks and overlay options until I like what I see.
If I'm feeling ambitious or working on a logo, the next step is to vectorize. With brush pen style, I like to vectorize each pen stroke separately. It makes it easier to manipulate until it looks just right.
Sometimes it's helpful to reverse it out (ie look at it on a black background) so that you can focus on the negative spaces. Areas of inconsistent space and weight will typically be more noticeable.
After hours of messing around with anchor points and bezier curves, and the word starts to adopt some consistency and flow, the word or logo is complete!
