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This is an interactive Bulletin Board on the topics of Sign making, design, fabrication, History, old Books and of coarse Letterheads, Keepers of the craft. The Hand Lettering Forum features links to resources, sign art history, techniques, and artists profiles. Learn more about Letterheads at https://theletterheads.com. Below you'll see Mchat has been added as a live communication portal for trial, and the Main forum Links are listed below.

Hand Lettering 101

Hand Lettering topics: Sign Making, Design, Fabrication, Letterheads, Sign Books.

Moderators: Ron Percell, Mike Jackson, Danny Baronian

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Robin Sharrard
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 10:15 am

Hand Lettering 101

Post by Robin Sharrard »

While checking out some old SignCraft magazines. I came across one of Mike's articles about Fonts. One of the sources listed was House Industries ( www.houseindustries.com ) They have a set of Sign Painter fonts that, as Mike said, are quite accurate to many of the hand painted styles I've seen and tried to exicute. More importanly to those who may be trying to learn hand lettering, this web site offers three free sample fonts. One of these fonts is called House Brush, which comes from the Sign Painter Font Kit. I've been trying to hand letter this font with limited success for quite some time. I typed up a few of my favorit quotes with stroke widths that came close to certain brush sizes and printed them out on some plain white paper. I placed them behind a storm window insert, out of our front storm door, that I use to practice on, and it serves as a nice guide to practice this brisk stroked lettering style. If you want to paint on a surface with a little more resistance, just convert the text in your computor to an object, place a thin outline around the letter and get rid of the fill color and print it. Now you can paint right on the paper. This is a one stroke font style so don't just try to fill in the letter with several strokes, rather loosen-up and try to paint each letter as quickly as you can with one stroke. This will work with fancy script as well. Just don't get frustrated and give up. With anything woth doing, continual practice will pay off and befor you know it, you won't need the guide anymore. Robin
Robin Sharrard
Sharrard Graphics & Signs
Fallon,Nevada
Mike Jackson
Site Admin
Posts: 1705
Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2004 11:02 pm
Location: Jackson Hole, WY
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Post by Mike Jackson »

Hi all,
I like House Industries...I own quite a few of their fonts. They do a solid job of digitizing and kerning. One of my favorite scripts is the one in the House-A-Rama collection. The font is called League Night. The Sign Painters collection is also a fun one.

Mike
Mike Jackson / co-administrator
Golden Era Studios
Vintage Ornamental Clip art
Jackson Hole, WY

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Jill Marie Welsh
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 9:40 am
Location: Butler, PA USA

Post by Jill Marie Welsh »

Robin,
This is a really good idea for fledgling hand-letterers.
So many times at meets I see people who have the best of intentions just struggling.
This would be a way of training both your hands and your eyes.
Many times newbies want to just mince along, outlining then filling in,
whereas your method teaches them to do a good one-stroke type letter.
I always say, if you don't know basic letter forms, make yourself a pattern and learn brush control from trial and error.
I think everyone should have a repotoire of basic alphabets in their heads:
A good Roman style, a clean sans serif, and a killer script.
These are the building blocks, and can be adapted to suit almost any situation.
I like House fonts too :wink: especially the Coop stuff.
Love.....Jill
Billy Pickett
Posts: 118
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:59 am

Post by Billy Pickett »

...Vinyl-ists (or newbies) who would like to learn how, CAN learn to to hand letter, but will have to practice EVERY day. (All day long if poss.) Like the mechanical skills of typing and learning guitar, practice is necessary to "learn the strokes". That's all it takes.

...Sometimes instead of just sticking letters on a sign, get out the brushes and paint it! Even painting the cheapest "no parking" type messages will be good practice. You have to forget about doing signs for the money only. The money will come later...when you get proficient.

...And, in addition to learning to letter there actually ARE some advantages to using paint instead of stickers on signs.
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