APP Words: Hand Lettering Experimentation 2

[9] 

During one of my lectures I sketched out some quick letterforms and tried out Blackletter with a variety of pens; I used the biro pen, the pilot pen and brush pen that my lecturer provided. It was nice to play around with different nib sizes to achieve different outcomes and even though it was relatively tricky to get to grips with it was a really fun exercise.

Two of my classmates decided to join me and we produced an A3 sheet of random letters and words with these pens and brushes. We tried Blackletter, Script and Sans Serif to see which styles worked best with these pens. I wasn’t very experienced with Blackletter so my tries weren’t perfect but there’s a first time for everything!

I moved onto doing the two-pencil trick where I cello taped two pencils together and wrote normally, then shaded in the letters with biro pen. This created a really interesting effect and I would like to use this in my initial designs. This is because it has that really ‘fun’ as well as a slightly calligraphic appearance because of the contrasting thick and thin strokes. 

In the end I had several pages of my sketchpad of all of my experiments as well as the A3 sheet my classmates and me produced (which is now hung up on the wall). I ventured further into ‘thicker’ forms as I noticed that they looked fun and exciting, and drew the same style and words but in different versions (‘tea and biscuits’). As you can see, the top one looks more scripted and delicate but when I created a thick outline it looks more cartoon-y.

N.B I used existing typefaces to provide a basis for my sketches and have referenced each style next to them in my sketchpad. 

Conclusion: 

This set of brief exercises with different pen types and styles has shown me that I could actually use anything in hand lettering, and I would like to experiment further with watercolour paint and ink. I would have to find something that would well with illustration, but for now it’ll be good if I had a diverse range of styles and materials.

[n] Learning Outcome