Getting Mad With Type

Getting Mad With Type

by Connor Hayward

Index 4–5

Process Essay

6–7

Inspiration

2

8–11

You Fucking Suck

16–20 Everyone Wishes You Were Dead

12–15 Your A Waste Of Socks

3

Process Essay

When we were first given the opportunity to have an open-ended project for typography; I knew I wanted to do something that I haven’t tried before.

I have seen a lot of things on the Internet on hand drawn typography, and I thought I might use this project as a time for me to explore this technique.

I had a set of calligraphy pens that I bought after watching a video of Seb Lester drawing famous logos, and I assumed that I would be using these pens for the whole project. Lester craftsmanship is so fine-tuned that he makes it look very easy, to my dismay it was very hard.

I knew that I wanted to do hand drawn typography, but I had to have some sort of content to write. I noticed on Instagram that there was a trend to have inspirational quotes done in hand lettering. I saw it so much that it almost became a observably kitschy, and obnoxious. I thought that it might be a nice twist if I did the exact opposite of these cheerful quotes, and replace them with relatively mean sayings.

I used the phrase “You Fucking Suck� for my first attempt at hand lettering. I started by sketching out the letters with pencil on Bristol paper, and then tracing over them with pen and ink. I found that I had a hard time making the letterforms have the correct stress, making the letterforms look

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artificial. After failing with at my first attempt, I decided to try and use the calligraphy pens that I had bought on a whim. I had no idea how to use these pens at first and found my self constantly practicing drawing the letterforms because I couldn’t get them right. After filling up a large amount of paper in S’s and the F’s, I decided to take the best letters I had drawn and scan them into Photoshop. I realized that I had done a terrible job of kerning the letters, even though I had used grid paper. This is where I started to realize that I needed way more practice on this technique, and I had been very rash to jump into something I knew little about.

next project I would like to do the exact opposite of this approach and work on type setting. Hand lettering is something that I clearly need to practice to become proficient. I was disillusioned to Seb Lester’s calligraphy pen, because I assumed that the tool made it easier to make letterforms.

After doing this project I will spend more outside time practicing hand lettering, because it is something I would like to get better at.

After struggling with the first project I thought that it might be better to try and switch up the way I created my letterforms. I remembered back to Graphic Design One, where we vectored letters in illustrator. I thought that this might be a better way for me to edit the letters I had drawn. The next quote I chose was “You Are A Waste Of Socks.” I began to sketch out where the words were placed, and then took those sketches into illustrator. I found this process to be a lot less tedious because I knew how to use the pen tool better than an actual calligraphy pen. The next phrase I followed the same process and changed the composition around using the rulers in illustrator.For the

5

Inspiration

6

7

You Fucking Suck

8

Sketches

9

10

11

You Are A Waste Of Socks

12

Sketches

13

14

15

Everyone Wishes You Were Dead

16

Sketches

17

In Progress

18

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