How to Choose Lettering Styles
Another often asked question is how I choose the lettering styles for my composition.
This is a great question, and there is no right answer.
I have my steps and thought processes behind my decisions, so I'm going to share that with you. It might not end up working for you, but it is a good starting point for not just deciding on your styles but also your composition. So, give it a try and then tweak it as you practice to fit you better!
Ok, onwards!
In general, I have two ways of deciding what styles to use. I'll start with the first one today ~
Decide on your overall composition and then use that to inform what styles to use.
Sounds confusing, I know, but let me break it down into steps that will make it sound less abstract. These are also the same steps I use to create my overall composition, so some of it might seem familiar if you've followed any of my past tutorials.
Step One. Write down your quote.
If you're just starting to create lettering compositions, I would choose a shorter quote maybe with 5 words maximum. Once you feel more comfortable with composition, then move on to longer quotes.
Step Two. Choose the words you want to emphasize.
Emphasize the words that are important in getting the meaning of your quote across. So in this week's piece, the quote I used was "I may be wrong, but it's highly unlikely." So, in this case I wanted the focus to be on "wrong" and "unlikely", which means I would be making them bigger and in different lettering styles. Everything else can be smaller and in the same or a similar style.
Side tip for composition
I like quotes with two parts that are connected by a conjunction, like "but" in this case, because it's a natural breaking point. Furthermore, it allows you to be somewhat symmetrical in your design if the number of words before and after the conjunction are similar.
So in this case, we have four words before (I may be wrong) the conjunction and three words after (It's highly unlikely).
Even though there are fewer words after, there are actually more letters in total, so the two sections are more or less even if you include the spaces between words. This means I can aim for a symmetrical design where I split up the quote into five sections:
1. I may be
2. wrong
3. but
4. it's highly
5. unlikely
with "wrong" and "unlikely" being the biggest in order to draw the viewer's eye to those specific words and "but" being in the middle in order to split the composition into two parts.
Step Three. Choose your overall composition shape.
Knowing the overall shape helps me decide what styles to use because I want to choose styles that will fit well together and fill in my chosen space.
I like to think of lettering composition like playing Tetris with the words being the individual pieces that you want to fit together.
For example, this week's post is in the overall shape of a square, and after drawing the square, I used different styles and sizes of words to fill in most of the square. And then doodles to fill in any extra space.
In the beginning, I recommend sticking to simple geometric shapes like squares, rectangles, circles, etc. as a way to guide you not only in composition, but also choosing lettering styles. When you're constrained by a space, it feels less daunting to come up with styles. Instead your mind is more likely to treat it like a puzzle and make it fun!
You can also just start off by varying your block letter sizes (even within a word) or rounding the corners of your block letters vs not rounding. Those two changes alone can evoke different feelings from your lettering piece and give it lots of visual interest.
As you get more comfortable, you can start adding in different styles.
Which leads me to the next step.
Step Four. Choose your lettering styles.
Like I mentioned above, you can use the space limitation of your overall piece to inform what styles to use.
But here are some more tips that can help you decide:
1) Certain styles can evoke emotions and feelings, so some words can guide you in choosing the style. For example, rounded block letters feel softer and calmer while extremely angular block letters feel more angry and harsh. Sans serifs feel more modern while serifs can feel more old school.
Something I do when I need inspiration is to just Google image search an emotion+lettering style. A lot of results are fonts and typography, but you can use those to inspire you in creating your own.
2) Use faux calligraphy if you have a lot of extra space to fill. So for example in my post this week, I knew I wanted to put "but" in a line all on its own, but it's such a short word and I didn't want to make it too big. So, faux calligraphy was a great choice because it has the beginning and ending swooshes to fill in the space.
3) You can use banners to fill in space as well. There are so many different ways to draw banners that can fill in a variety of spaces. You can also use it to emphasize certain words if you make it bigger and more detailed.
(Click here for a brief tutorial I made on how to draw different banners on IG.)
4) Similar to faux calligraphy, you can use ascenders, descenders, crossbars, etc. to fill in extra space between lines and words. For example, I curved and extended the bar of the G in "wrong" to fill in that extra space I had at the end of the word.
5) Lastly, don't be afraid to play around with the sizing of letters within a word. For example, in "unlikely" I shrank the "i" and "y" so they'd fit above the lower arm of the L.
A lot of developing your own lettering style is through playing around with the letters during practice. In the beginning they might not be as you imagined or they might look terrible, but the more you practice, the more you'll understand what looks good and what doesn't.
Some things to keep in mind:
Make sure you keep your spacing consistent between words, letters and lines of your composition. You don't want some areas to be too squished and others too spread out. Consistency in spacing is one of the most important things in creating a visually appealing piece.
Make sure your composition and lettering styles are legible as being able to actually read the quote is pretty important. If it takes people a lot of effort to read your quote, they won't do it. They will swipe away without hesitation, so not only do you want to grab their attention with an aesthetically pleasing composition, you also want to make it as clear and easy to read as possible.
Phew! This turned into a longer post than I had planned. If you read it all, thank you so much!!! I give you many, many kudos. XD