Special thanks to: Ivan Castro.

Context: The context of this workshop was to help us gain an insight to custom typography, as well as developing our skills in doing so. By the end of the workshop we were able to define a custom letting style that could express a particular mood.

Process: We started the workshop by discussing the qualities of the brush pen, which included it’s versatility -as the brush pen can be used with most wet medias- and how you can achieve different effects by changing the speed and movement of your hand, and also a quick demonstration. We then moved on to practicing ourselves by attempting to create a series of downward strokes that maintained the same thickness throughout the stroke.

We then moved on to practicing how to draw curves with the pen, by practicing the basic letterform and alternating thick and thin strokes with the downward and upward strokes respectively. This then enabled us to start creating the letters ‘n, m, r, and h’ and with variation on the direction of the curves we were able to create the letters ‘u, t, and y’.

We continued on in this way, grouping letters into four groups by their structure or shape (shown below) which enabled us to get a better understanding of how the letterforms were created in the first place and how to efficiently draw them.

The last group of letters proved quite a challenge as some letters such as ‘x or z’ required us to move the page around to get a letter that looked right. We were then asked to create a pangram (a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet).

After a short lunch break we moved on to capital letters -which for me at least turned our horribly as each letterform ‘rule’ was turned completely on it’s head and it was like learning the letters from scratch again.

Our final task of the workshop involved using a phrase, quote or sentence that we were all asked to think of. We then were asked to think about the mood of that phrase and how it would present itself visually. We then brought this to life by creating our own custom lettering that we felt conveyed the mood chosen. 

After lots and lots of idea generation and tests we moved onto creating the final piece. By the end of the workshop I felt we all had a piece we were happy with. 

Insights: The first insight I had gained from this workshop was how different writing tools can create different effects and how they all differ visually. This was demonstrated by Ivan Castro himself as he showed how using a brush with ink and quicker strokes can create a grungy mood, or how using a brush with watercolour can get a really feminine feel that also shows a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. “Using the right tools can help make hand lettering a lot easier.” (Igor Ovsyannykov 2017) This is useful to think about because I feel that you should choose the tool that fits the mood making it easier and more efficient to create beautiful pieces of work.

The second insight I gained from this workshop is how much type can influence our moods and decisions. We are hardwired to believe that certain typefaces mean certain things, Sarah Hyndman (2015) suggests that “we all interact with, and consume, a vast array of typefaces every day of our lives and most of the time we do this without being consciously aware of it.” She also says that “type influences what we read and affects our choices because we all instinctively understand what it is communicating to us, and we have been learning to interpret the references all our lives.” This means that one could look at a typeface such as Helvetica and they would instantly associate it as being ‘clean’ or ‘professional’ whereas if you were to look at Times New Roman you would instantly think that it looks old. I feel that this is important to learn as it helps us as designers to quickly think of typefaces that would work well in different circumstances and how that influences others perceptions of our designs.

Future Application: I feel that experimenting with custom lettering is something that all designers should do at least once, not only is it fun, but it provides a deeper understanding of the letterforms we use so often. Using hand lettering as opposed to computer based type also creates a whole different vibe in pieces and so opens up different styles. Not only this, but hand lettering is a really quick and relatively easy way to generate ideas and solutions which is very beneficial to us as designers as it allows us to be as efficient as possible. Finally, I feel that it’s beneficial to have a broad range of outcomes in something like a folio and opening yourself up to new techniques such as this is a way to incorporate different pieces.