Understanding lettering lingo - Illustrator Tutorial

- [Instructor] The realm of typography has a lot of unique terminology and names. You'll be familiar with some of the more common ones, but others tend to only be referenced by hardcore typophiles . So let's take a look and see what these terms mean so you can understand the underlying rules associated with typography as you approach hand lettering. So we're going to take a look at some of these terminology, and obviously when it comes to lettering, here's an example of hand lettering where it's nice, in prim, and proper, and it follows a baseline. If we drop that baseline in here, and the baseline is just that. It's the base that all the letter forms sit upon. You also have an X height. X height defines the top edge of the lowercase letters. You also have what's called the T height for obvious reasons. It's usually because the T extends even higher than the X height. And then you have the cap height. The cap height is the capital letters, and this showcases how that associates with your lettering. You also have the terminology called ascenders and descenders. If we look at this word lettering, we have no letter forms ascending above the cap height, but the letter form G descends below the baseline. Now, when you're working on lettering like this this would be a way to keep everything kind of in line. Even though you can see these tees are different, the e's are different, they're different shape of letter forms because this is hand lettering. It's not a font. It's going to look better if you kind of add some movement to these even more so. So if we turn this off and we turn this on, you can see how I've made 'em bounce around a little bit. So before it was pretty straightforward, straight across, but now these are a little more lively, and that's what's going to bring a lot of kind of engagement to your hand lettering. So you always want to do that. You don't want to get really static with it. Let's take a look at another type of style of hand lettering based off of cursive writing. I grew up in an age where we would practice writing out cursive letter forms over and over again, and we did this to lock those visual shapes into our long-term memory. So cursive is a great way to approach hand lettering. Our word lovely shows how the two letters L ascend above the X height and the cap height, and the Y drops far below the baseline. Of course, there is a lot of artistic license you can leverage when hand lettering. So don't be afraid to explore and experiment as you draw your letter forms. Now, there's a lot of different styles you can take when you approach lettering. I'll freely admit that when I'm designing brand identity, I almost always use san serif typefaces. There's been a few exceptions over the years, but I'm a fan of san serif. San serif means there are no serifs on the end where the letter forms terminate, and it's usually continuous weight as it goes through. Now it's going to change a little bit based off of the letter form you're working on, but for the most part this would be a good representation of a sans based letter form for an S. Here's the letter S done to more serif fashion where you actually have serifs at the end of the letter form. Here's script. You could do a hand lettering that's based off of a script. By the way, I should point out, all these were drawn on iPad Pro using Adobe Fresco. So you can do a lot of this type of vector drawing in that environment, as I showed in the previous movie. Here's another way. You can get a little more graphic with it if you're doing a letter S. A lot of different ways you can handle hand lettering, or you can even get more illustrative. So maybe S as in snake, and you can have fun with it in that respect. All of these things I'm showing you work hand in hand, and it's a combination of a lot of attributes. And shape recognition and thinking in shapes are going to help you solve something, creatively speaking, when it comes to hand lettering. Now, when it comes to rounds in letter form, specifically rounds in the letter form O and the letter form S, whenever you're doing this, you want to make sure that your O, and your S, or any other letter form that comes to a curve at the top and bottom needs to fall below your baseline. Because if it doesn't, it's going to visually look smaller compared to all the other letter forms that you're hand lettering. And that applies whether it's upper case, and that applies when it's lower case as well. Let's take a little more scrutiny at this. If we look at this design, you can see how our letter forms are kind of going above the cap height here and below the baseline here. And that, the letter forms O and letter form G are specifically doing that. Now, since your hand lettering, it's never going to be perfect. This N barely falls below the baseline and goes just a tad bit above it on top. That's okay. That's the forgiveness aspect to hand lettering. But these O's, if you made 'em smaller, they're going to look smaller, that is, if that overlap on the top and the baseline aren't there. So let's take a look at if you made those the same height as the cap height and aligned with the baseline. Notice how the O and G just looks smaller than the L and N. So if you exceed that it's going to work better. So that's one thing you need to keep in mind when you're hand lettering. Let's take a look at my name. Here's my name. You have the O, which again, I'm making sure goes above the cap height, below the baseline. So it doesn't read smaller, but you're going to run into the same problem when you're dealing with a letter form like V. I want V, where it comes to a point at the bottom, to fall below the baseline. Because if I don't, and I match it with the baseline, it just makes the letter look a lot smaller than it really should. Those are the kind of principles and detailing you need to pay attention to. Let's look at some of the more obscure terminology. I say obscure 'cause most people, unless you're a typophile, you hardly ever refer to things like this. This is called an arm. So everything I'm showing you that's this lime green color represents the name that they've given it. So on a letter E, this would be called an arm. Let's take a look at a leg. If you look at the letter K, this would be called a leg. And it kind of makes sense why these names kind of came to represent these things in terms of type and lettering. Let's take a look at the foot. What's the foot? Well, actually I should go back. I put a foot on this leg, and technically I guess it doesn't really have a foot. A foot is where the letter form comes to the bottom, and this would be the foot. So kind of odd looking. Like he has gangrene or something, but please forgive that. (instructor laughs) Let's take a look at the next one. Ear, this is the ear loop and hook. So the ear is kind of an interesting thing. Until I put this together, I'd never heard the ear before. So that was new for me. But that just represents this little part that falls off, in this case, on a lowercase g. And then you, of course, you have the loop, and then you have the hook that connects the top and the bottom of the letter form. Some of these make sense if you think about 'em in context. Other ones are a little strange. I don't know if I would've ever thought of naming this beak. I guess it kind of makes sense, but this is a beak. I would've just called this as serif, but I guess they call it a beak. So there you go. And of course I had fun with that playing off of a bird. Here's another one that kind of makes sense. If you think about it, a Q. These are tails. And these apply whether it's an uppercase or lowercase letter. So this uppercase Q has a tail here, and then the lowercase letter, a y, has a tail going off of that as well. Let's take a look at the next one. Stem spine. And over here, I can't see what the other name was, so we're going to pull it out. And counters, that's right. That was the other thing is, like some of of these names, I don't know if I've ever would've thought counter. I'm not really sure why they named it that, but that's what it is. But if you start on the left, the stem, the stem makes sense. It's like the stem of a plant, and I put leaves on. It wouldn't have leaves obviously. And the spine would be the center part of an S, in this case. And this just shows the thinking. That kind of made sense. It's kind of shaped like a spine. The one that throws me off still is counters. I don't know if I would've called it counters. I don't know, interior space, or I don't know what I would've called it. But anyway, counters. There you go. You learn something new. Let's jump to the next one. Bowl. Bowl applies to uppercase, and these would be such as on a B. These curve parts on a B, that would be a bowl applied to an uppercase. And an open bowl, if you have a certain typeface where the styling you have a cut in it, this would be called an open bowl. So don't put stuff in it. It's going to spill out. Let's go to the next one. This would be a bowl, in context that is, of lowercase on an a, for example. And then you have what they call the shoulder, which is this part of an r, which kind of makes sense if you think about it. And let's talk about terminals. Terminals are where a letter form comes to an end. And on an r you'll have a terminal. This is almost like a ball terminal here. And the terminal on the A would be this flare up here showing in the letter form t. Let's keep moving forward. We're going to take a look at what is called an apex. And much like my name, Von, where the bottom part of the V extended a little past the baseline. So the letter form wouldn't come off as reading smaller. This principle on an A, specifically an uppercase A, is the apex where it goes above the cap height. And then on the letter, uppercase letter N, this is kind of a globular looking letter form. This would be called the stroke, that is, on an upper case N. Let's take a look at the barb, spur, and stress. Barb and spur sound like some cowboy named this, but it kind of makes sense. These are, what we call serifs in a general sense, but when it comes to a point, it's usually referred to as a barb. Think a rosebush, and they have little barbs or thorns on 'em. That would be a barb. A spur would be this part in the H that makes the crossbar on the H. And a stress, I don't know why they wouldn't just call this a spine as well because this would just mean he has bad posture, I guess. I don't know. But they decide to call it a stress. So there you go. Another one I never knew until I put this together. Hair lines. Hair lines are where your letter forms get thinner. And specifically on serif based type of typography, you're going to have thicker body areas of the letter form. And these would be the hairlines of this section going down here for on the A, and the section going up on the right on the capital U. Now here would be the word the, and this would be a non-ligature type of hand lettering. Now if you wanted to add a ligature, this is what a ligature would look like where it ties the T in the H together, and they kind of flow together. And there's a lot of OTF fonts out there that if you click on letter forms, or if you just go to type in, and there's a T and H associated in the word you're putting together, at times it'll just default to the ligature. This is how you can pull that same thing off in your hand lettering. So as you can see, there's a lot of terminologies, a lot of different rules, but it's important to remember, it's good to know the rules of typography, and those rules would be reflected in these baselines and all the other things we covered previously. But it's good to know the rules of typography so they can assist you as you draw your letter forms. But if the rules get in your way, creatively speaking, I encourage you to break them. Hand drawn letter forms should give you the freedom to ignore a rule if you think your lettering would look or communicate better doing it another way. That is the beauty of creating a hand lettered design.