Lettering Composition Tip: Thumbnails + Shapes!
It’s finally time to jump into compositions, my most frequently asked topic. And I’ve been putting it off because it’s not the easiest to teach. I learned everything myself, which means I don’t know much about the theories or science behind composition. I just know what looks good to me and I stick with it. But as with all things art, a nice composition can be a very subjective thing. What’s something I like may not be what you like.
But, I will try my best to talk about what I do to create my compositions, and I hope you can extrapolate that to fit your aesthetic. If there are any specific questions or topics you’d like to discuss, shoot me an email (nolalettering@gmail.com) or leave a comment or DM me on IG. I’m approachable from all fronts! Ooookay, enough procrastination, lets get into it!
If you’re just beginning with lettering compositions, start with short phrases or sentences. Too many words can be overwhelming, so starting small is a good way to go. The more compositions you do, the less intimidating long quotes can be. My first lettering composition ever was “It was rainy.” Very short and simple! Ain’t no shame in that.
So, once you’ve picked your quote, we’re going to jump into practice through thumbnails and shapes. It may sound simple, but it’s such a great way to not only try out different compositions without committing a bunch of time and energy to it, but also for practicing!
Start Small: The Power of Thumbnails
What are thumbnails? They’re basically small, rough layout ideas. These don’t have to be detailed or readable or neat. They’re just meant to help you experiment with:
Word placement
Flow and hierarchy
Shape of the overall piece
Emphasis points
You’re basically playing with puzzle pieces (words) and trying to fit them together in different ways to figure out what looks good. It helps to look at your composition thumbnails after you’ve done a bunch, and see what you like/dislike about them so you know what to do/not do in future compositions. Or if you end up with a favorite thumbnail, you can turn that into a larger composition. But for now, we’re just going to do small pieces.
You can try to do one a day or a few a day. Don’t spend too much time on them, and you don’t even really have to worry about the lettering styles of each word yet, especially during the sketch phase. You can stick with monoline and just play around with curving, slanting and stacking the words. Think about what words you want to emphasize and which ones are ok to get lost in the composition.
Don’t worry about making the composition neat. You can jump straight into pen if you’re feeling brave or start withe pencil, laying down the words before going to ink. Even when you ink, though, definitely don’t think about how straight or clean your lines need to be.
Overthinking is not conducive to practicing!
Use Shapes to Guide the Flow
Thumbnails are generally rectangular, but that’s too boring and not challenging. You can consider using different geometric shapes to spark creative ideas. For example, you can create a circular composition, or use a triangle or heart shape. Whatever you decide, draw the shape first before laying down the words. And definitely try all the shapes!
Shapes help you organize the chaos of a quote—and they make your compositions feel more visually interesting. But sometimes when you use shapes, you might feel like a letter or word doesn’t fit the shape exactly, and if that’s the case, it’s ok to not follow the shape! Again, the shapes are just a general guide. If the tail of your g is too long and sticks out of the shape, let it stick out!
Let’s Look at an Example...
For this blog post, I worked with the quote:
“So, if I don’t go big, I can go home?” (Mood)
I created six different thumbnail compositions using the same exact words—but with different layouts and various shapes.
As you can see, I did two rectangles, two squares, a circle and … one without any kind of shape. I also started with a blue pencil that’s really hard to photograph. So don’t think I went straight in with pen. With the pencil, all I did was draw the shape and write down the words. I didn’t do block letters or serif or worry about the styles at all. It was just a way for me to visually see how I can organize the words of the quote. They’re all relatively similar with “go big” and “go home” being the main focus points.
I probably wouldn’t have thought of half of these compositions if I’d just jumped in with my usual layout instincts. I would probably have stuck with the first composition, but now that I’m looking at these different versions, I much prefer the right one in the second row. I would tweak some things here and there, but I do like how “go big” and “go home” turned out!
And as you can see in my first rectangle (upper left), I didn’t have enough space for the ? so I let it stick outside. If I ever decide to turn this into an actual big composition, I would make “Go” much smaller (which is what I did in some of the other sketches). I’m learning!
What to Try in Your Next Composition
Here’s a simple process to try when you want to practice your composition:
Pick a quote (shorter ones work best for this!)
Draw 4–6 small shapes on a scrap piece of paper or sketchbook
Write your quote in pencil in those shape, playing around with where the words fall or their sizes, but don’t worry about style yet!
Go over your pencil with a pen and start playing around with styles. If you color in the letters, it’s very easy to modify them into serifs or making some bits chonkier than others. And of course, filled in letters and unfilled letters give off different vibes, and you can use that in your composition.
And then repeat! Whether with the same quote but different shapes or different quote but same shapes. This shouldn’t take you too long. You know how in writing there’s brain dumps or stream of consciousness writing where you don’t over think and just write whatever comes to mind? This is the same, but for lettering. Just go with your gut feelings, and then go back and look at them. Really decide what you like/dislike about each thing and incorporate the likes in your next composition.
Final Thoughts
Creating a solid composition doesn’t have to be stressful. Sometimes, it just takes stepping back, shrinking things down, and giving yourself space and permission to explore.
And as usual, practice, practice, practice! The more you do it, the easier (and faster) it gets. If you need feedback on any of your thumbnails, let me know! Always happy to help!
Also, let me know if you try this technique and share it on social media by tagging me @nolalettering everywhere! Thanks for reading!