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Really want to wow your clients? Then pull out your scratch pad and start sketching their logo for them- on the spot. Not sure how? Then hand lettering is just the skill you need.
Beginner to intermediate
Access to Adobe Illustrator is recommended
Understand the fundamentals of graphic design and lettering to progress your design education.
Learn alongside the lettering artist Chris Do hired to create the Blind logo and add an essential skill to your creative toolbox.
The Origins of the Old Style
Take lettering back to its roots and understand how forms were originally created so you can apply this logic to your own drawings.
Type Terms & Nomenclature
The details make the design, and you’ll learn the technicalities behind two popular letterforms: the old style serif and blackletter.
Bring Ideas to Life
Learn best practices for getting your lettering compositions on paper and how to apply your new knowledge of letterforms to existing type.
Let’s Get Digital
Move your pencil drawings into vector form in Adobe Illustrator and get your lettering pieces portfolio-ready with Nils’ pen-tool best practices.
Level-Up Your Style
Once you’ve mastered the basics, watch as Nils critiques work from Art Center students and apply these advanced techniques to your own compositions.
The Origins of the Old Style
Take lettering back to its roots and understand how forms were originally created so you can apply this logic to your own drawings.
Type Terms & Nomenclature
The details make the design, and you’ll learn the technicalities behind two popular letterforms: the old style serif and blackletter.
Bring Ideas to Life
Learn best practices for getting your lettering compositions on paper and how to apply your new knowledge of letterforms to existing type.
Let’s Get Digital
Move your pencil drawings into vector form in Adobe Illustrator and get your lettering pieces portfolio-ready with Nils’ pen-tool best practices.
Level-Up Your Style
Once you’ve mastered the basics, watch as Nils critiques work from Art Center students and apply these advanced techniques to your own compositions.
This course is for any designer looking to understand type to improve their layout and design skills.
I learned more about typography in this course than during my BA in graphic design. This gives me confidence that I can make effective layouts and better design of any kind. I also felt I was part of a community, who learned together. Once a week for seven weeks, Chris critiqued our submitted layouts and this motivated us to put knowledge into practice and submit our work. This course is the best investment I've made in myself in becoming a better graphic designer. And I've invested in a lot of courses and books.
Calling all graphic designers! Give your portfolio that extra edge by bettering your lettering and moving beyond prefab type.
“This course will show you that your body is far more capable of making beautiful images than your computer is. You will be able to make grounded visual judgements as you begin your journey into a timeless craft of drawing and designing letterforms.”
Nils Lindstrom,
Type Instructor, ACCD
I was classically trained as a student at the ArtCenter College of Design in the late 1970’s. We called it “Build up Lettering”.
It involved three to four pencil renderings on tracing paper. Each tracing would be progressively refined toward a more exact version. It was a tedious and time consuming process, but therapeutic at the same time.
Little did I know, we were making the type then.
Lettering taught me how to see shape, proportion, and curve like nothing else. I could bend it, shape it and manipulate it from an informed place.
Learning to draw type has given me the power to make my type expressive without being enslaved by the grid or severe geometry that so often hobbles young designers.
Trends come and go. The current approach to custom typography is producing mostly letterforms that are geometrically aggressive and difficult to read. They may be interesting but, more often than not, are created to impress other designers.
Understanding of the organic nuances of hand-drawn letterforms allows you to create logos and brands that are warm, user-friendly and familiar—all while being unique and trademarkable.
I believe we should design for the masses and respect that audience. The “Chop and scale” approach with prefabricated type can only take you so far. Eventually your incompetence will show. What do you do when that happens?
Start with lettering.
When you have a client that needs an old logo refreshed, you’re the go-to-person for the job. When you could use some flourishes, decorative elements, dimensionality, you’ll know what to do and more importantly, HOW to do it without embarrassing yourself.
From analog to digital, learn the fundamentals and advanced techniques of hand lettering and apply your new skills to client and personal projects, for a portfolio of work like no other.
Course
Curriculum
Lettering
Evoke emotion, draw in the viewer, and communicate a compelling message with power of hand lettering.
- We’ve updated Lettering 01. Current students: Log into course for free access
- 4 Hours of video content
- Downloadable materials
- Practice exercises
- Bonus student critiques
- Lifetime updates
