With the emergence of new technologies, traditional handwriting has lost its prominence in everyday life. Despite this, there is an attempt to recover this custom and lettering is a new fashion that aims to rescue the art of handwriting from oblivion.
Lettering and calligraphy
Calligraphy is the art of writing by hand, whether with a pen, marker or brush. Instead, lettering is the art of hand-drawing letters with an aesthetic sense. Therefore, calligraphy and lettering are similar and closely related activities, but not exactly the same. Calligraphy is a writing technique that seeks the beauty of the written text. On the other hand, lettering is a more artistic activity and in it the composition and harmony of the letters acquires great importance.
Valuable Considerations
To get started in the artistic drawing of letters, it is advisable to start practicing in a notebook with soft sheets. It is advisable to use felt-tip pens and with some flexibility, which allows a better design of the letters.
Fans of this artistic activity usually practice with watercolors and brushes, with black paper and metallic colored letters or with pens to make the so-called false lettering (also called faux lettering and which consists of imitating the thick and thin lines of modern calligraphy) .
An important aspect in this technique is the manual control of the pressure that is exerted at the time of writing.
If the pressure is strong, the lines are thick and if the pressure is light, the lines are thin.
To exercise manual skill, fans of lettering have the habit of training by making alphabet letters or drawing individual letters and repeating them successively. Another way to practice technique is to use lined paper.
Anyone who practices lettering or is professionally engaged in this activity must have a deep understanding of typography and its design techniques, especially tracking and kerning.
Graffiti artists and tattoo artists
Both of them need to know the techniques of lettering so that their compositions have balance and harmony. Normally the work that is carried out is of the artisan type, but it is possible to use some own computing resources.
In addition to tattoos and the world of graffiti, lettering is an activity with a wide range of applications: t-shirt design, book illustration or typographic design for advertising and marketing.
Photos: Fotolia - Pakhnyushchyy / bst2012
