DESIGN YOUR OWN LETTERING
If you can’t find the font that fits perfectly, then why
not edit one so that it does? Nickerson often
chooses a font that he thinks has “a complementary
base (and what I mean by base is the foundation and
overall traits such as the contrast from thick to thin,
unique characteristics and so on) to what look and
feel I’m trying to accomplish. From there I honestly
just mess around, sometimes I try connecting
certain aspects of the font to others (almost like
weird ligatures), sometimes I overlap the letters;
this is basically just having fun with the type and
letting my imagination go wild.”
Or you can go further and simply create your own
letters. “A big trend right now is hand-drawn
typography,” says Schmetzer. “The craftsmanship
behind typography is almost as important right now as
the final result it seems. This is a trend that covers
more areas than typography, people appreciate the
crafts behind a product or design, so there’s a story
behind hand-crafted shoes or the good cup of well
roasted coffee. It’s popular when the design looks
vintage and well-worn, even if it’s an effect made in
retrospect in Photoshop.”
This certainly appeals to Stankevich. “Since my
focus is on hand-drawn,” she says, “I like the fact that I
can see more and more of this style being used andappreciated. I live in London and there has been a
rising interest for bespoke and hand-painted signs, for
example, with many designers turning to using these
more traditional techniques. I think that’s great, though
I personally prefer a good balance between traditional
and digital.”
Simpson didn’t come to illustrating his own letters
until quite late in his career. He says, “As an
illustration-focused designer I would be working
mainly with text for titles and headings rather than
body copy. I found picking fonts very frustrating (butSTEVE SIMPSON BROUGHT HIS HAND-LETTERED APPROACH TO PACKAGING FOR JAMESON
CASE STUDY: JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY DESIGN
“One of my most recent projects is a limited
edition label forJameson Irish Whiskey,” says
Simpson. “It uses a lot of hand lettering and
icons. The whole label was created in Photoshop
CC. I use the Pen tool to create my shapes. Some
of these get rasterized so I can add texture
others are left as shapes and exported to
Illustrator if foils or embossing are required. I
didn’t use any fonts, deciding to re-create the
Jameson branding so it’s ever so slightly quirky.”
That style is mainly “on the fun and quirky side,”
as Simpson puts it. “Standard letter spacing anduniformity is less important than if I was dealing
with more serious subjects. I like the way letters can
reach under, over or even through other letters. My
feeling is every letter should have its own space
depending on the letters on either side of it. I’m not
sure any app can do that yet.”
Hand lettering is a big part of Simpson’s arsenal,
and in the design world at large, he really believes
that “hand lettering is back in a big way. In design
there’s a definite move towards a more authentic,
analogue, less digital feel and hand lettering is
certainly part of that.”heaps better than using letterset catalogues), it always
seemed to be a case of the font wasn’t exactly what I
wanted but I’d spent far too long searching for the right
one... So it would just have to do. Soon I realised I could
change and adapt letter forms (and that it was actually
okay to do this), this made my work look so much
more cohesive. I guess the eureka moment for me
was when I realised that by hand drawing my own
letter forms they perfectly matched my illustration and
that it worked so well because it was my hand that had
both illustrated the image and illustrated the text – itCity: “I made the street and billboard texture in Photoshop,”
says Murilo Lopes. “I had to make the edges in a way that I could repeat the image unnoticed. The brief was to create
some text that represents the meaning of the word” © Murilo Lopes© Steven SimpsonGraphics & new media
150 The Professional Photoshop Book
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