MORE THAN JUST WORDS

January 2016 marks the start of my personal journey in lettering. Below is a visual documentaion of my day by day process in developing my lettering skills. As the quote states above, talent is one thing, but hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard enough. After completing 236/365 days of lettering each day, I am more than thankful to see how far my lettering progression has come. Although the challenge did not meet its full 365 days I put a stop to the challenge to focus on longer term type projects requiring a few days of work rather than a daily piece. However I have no regrets starting this challenge and find value in what practicing everyday can achieve.

The Glo-Up

After practicing lettering in a sketchbook for a few months, I finally built up the confidence to push myself harder and combine my lettering with my photography skills. By doing this I became more determined to go out and practice my photography for the purpose of improving my lettering skills. This practice truly pays off as this style has become one of my go-to's as a designer and has shown to be one of the skills that I am more passionate about in improving.

EXPLORING COLOURS

Going through a year of lettering can easily get boring. In order to keep myself engaged I set up new challenges each month after trying out lettering overlays. Below are a set of explorations I did for a month with lettering that further explores the possibilities of lettering within the design field. The fruit of these exercises from this month can be seen through the creation of a bigger type project Dry Bones Valley, an expressive handlettering piece that further explores lettering as illustrations.

OUTCOMES AND REFLECTIONS

This last section marks the end of the challenge and whenever I look back to some of these day by day pieces, I can see how far I have come in developing myself as a designer and I couldn't have got this far without the support and encouragement from my friends, family and fellow classmates. I am now currently challenging myself to further explore the overlay of lettering on photography more in depth and discovering the many more tools and effects that can be done through this style.