Lettering and Things
I'm Carla Hackett: letterer, designer, illustrator
and dreamer from Melbourne.
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So excited!!
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Questionable tasting notes on this weeks chemex brew from Market Lane coffee. ✨👄✨☕ (at Little Gold Studios)
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That sketch I was working on weeks ago turned into an apron for @eatdrinkpaleo! (at Little Gold Studios)
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Oh my, I am the luckiest!! @toolmantim got me the best present ever, the most amazing chalk from this old school German company Drei Sterne (3 Stars). The champagne chalk is so heavy and smooth and now I have a handy little holder. There’s even Fluoro pink liquid kreide to play with! (at Little Gold Studios)
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What do you know? Presentation Slides
Here’s the presentation and slides I put together for Web Directions ‘What Do You Know?’ night in Melbourne. The presentation is only allowed to be 5 minutes. Using my chalkboard to letter up my slides, I talked about what lettering is and then ran through a quick process of some lettering I did for the Ruby Conference tshirt design. It was a great experience!
So I’m here to talk about something pretty niche that mostly doesn’t involve a computer.
I’m a nerd like you guys but I like to nerd out on things like ears, bowls, legs, eyes, vertexes, arches, shoulders, ascenders, decenders and BALL TERMINALS.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, BALL TERMINALS.
No I’m not into ball sports. I’m into type. Or should I say lettering. I love to draw letters in chalk, in pencil and pens.
With whatever pen and paper I can get my hands on really. So what is lettering? Can’t I just use a font? That would be so much easier than drawing it.
Well as much as we all love futura, there are times when your design needs a bit more personality. We can use our very own hands to draw letters that are unique and one-off.
By definition, lettering is drawing. Actually, lettering is closer friends with illustration than typography is. Let’s also just clear up that calligraphy is writing and typography is a predictable and repeatable system of letters - a typeface. Each has it’s advantages, but drawn letters can be a beautiful image in their own right.
Shield your eyes now if you have an aversion to swashalicious swashes.
This is by Friends of Type and shows how lettering can enhance the message. There is no way you could do this with a typeface.
See what I did there? This is not type, this is lettering! This pun is by Ken Barber who taught me lettering in a workshop when I lived in Berlin.
There is amazing type all around you! You just have to turn on your lettering-dar. This awesome painted piece was seen on the streets of Melbourne.
So here’s where lettering becomes an important part of creating an image. This is some chalk lettering I did for the upcoming Eat Drink Paleo Cookbook cover.
The work by Mary Kate McDevitt is very much bordering on illustration. See how it hasn’t been vectorised and the imperfections show it was hand drawn.
On the other hand Jessica Hische likes to letter straight into illustrator. So it’s still lettering but there are times when the computer is good.
Sometimes people look at me weirdly when I take photos of butchers windows, but check out this brush script! I love it when I see beautiful sign painting out and about. The craft was almost wiped out with the introduction of vinyl signs and desktop publishing. But I think now there is a resurgence of hand crafted things. And in particular the skill of painting and drawing letters. And being able to draw makes you a better designer.
So if someone was to come to you and ask, “I need a website”, the quickest thing you can do is just choose a word press template, but you’d probably be lucky to find one that is exactly what you’re after. Where the real fun comes is in the customising. It’s the crafting of something that is unique. Just like your unique fixie you had built up.
So how does one make a piece of lettering? You really only need a pencil, rubber and some paper. But I like to break it down into three stages.
Research is looking through references - like vintage books and sign painting. Exploration is getting into the jigsaw puzzle of how the letters work together by drawing them. And refinement, inking up the final and doing some photoshop or illustrator magic.
Here’s a little example of lettering I did for the Ruby Conference. The organisers came to me and asked me to make a rad and unique tshirt.
After brainstorming with them, I was thinking the word Yield could be inspired by Americana baseball scripts so that it felt like TEAM RUBY.
So once I have an idea, I go straight to my references. Starting with my cat fonts of course.
From here it was pretty obvious on which direction to go.
Then I really got into studying retro brush scripts and sign painting that were all created with a lettering brush.
I’ll start by just writing out the word out a few times and play with composition using my brush pen.
Then I’ll draw out some light grid lines on an angle for a baseball type composition. I’m thinking that ‘y’ is pretty fun, what would happen if it looped to make an underline.
Then I trace over it again with another pencil sketch. Making refinements as I go and fixing things like the spacing.
I’m going to make those little end bits have a flick like a brush pen.
It’s important to fill in the letters not draw in outlines, so I can easily see the positive and negative space. Then I can focus in on details like the contrast on the strokes.
And when I’m happy with how that is looking the fun part is colouring in! Here’s the inked up Yield reading for scanning!
And here you have a bunch of geeks wearing a tshirt!
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Wow, what a weekend I had. I was lucky enough to go along to Clare Bowditch’s Big Hearted Business Conference at the Abbostford Convent.
I had decided at the last minute to put together a video to enter the BHB Scholarship. And to my absolute surprise and delight, I was one of 5 chosen! So to be able to go along and meet so many lovely people and hear all the inspirational speakers, I was overwhelmed with excitement.Just after finding out that I had won, Clare emailed me (!!!) asking if I would like to be the first “Inspiration Bomb” artist. I could not believe it! I felt completely honoured, and got the gear together with my lovely partner Tim to re-create the submission video vibe. I lettered on my chalkboard the interviews of two creative women - Kemi Kavapil and Catherine Deveny, and they are going to be sent out soon. Clare played a little snippet of the video at the conference! What a fantastic way to be part of the day!
The last few weeks and putting myself out there in this way has given me HUGE motivation and momentum. It was great to have that exposure to come out and tell the world this is what I LOVE DOING! As a “sensitive creative type” I have always struggled with talking about what I do out loud, so this was a TERRIFYING step, but I feel I am growing my confidence.
The main thing I took away from the conference was that I feel like I am not alone in pursuing making a living (or should that be making a life Catherine Deveny!) It is clear now more than ever that I am doing the right thing in pursuing my dream of running a creative business AND there’s people out there I can connect with, especially in this fine city of Melbourne.
It’s been a journey for me, ever since quitting my graphic design job in 2011 and then spending a joyous, hard, emotional, amazing, wunderbar year in Berlin then moving to Melbourne and taking the plunge moving into a beautiful studio space. During that time I did a LOT of soul searching and exploring what it is I want to do. I actually had an ‘everyone can FUCK OFF’ moment in Berlin, when I realised I don’t have to do what people think I SHOULD do. From that moment, I decided I’m going to do what I love! I didn’t really know (and am still working it out) how to go about it, but I am feeling more clear on CHOOSING HAPPINESS and that I do have VALUE and A STORY to tell in what I offer. BINGO! So unless I work out how to make a sustainable business, the world will miss out on me. This changes every negative thought in my head! Also I am working on my thoughts about MONEY and thinking of it as an energy, an exchange, and that I should not be scared in asking for it. In the words of Catherine Deveny, I want to be on my way to FUCK OFF status. That is, have the freedom of choice to do what I want with my money.
Some other lightbulb moments for me that I jotted down in my notebook:
Feedback is the breakfast of champions
Choice is good for happiness
Profit + skill + usefulness = success
Find your bigger story which inspires the people who love your stuff to find and buy your stuff
Brand = the net result of behaviour
Find your people. They KNOW, LIKE and TRUST you
Ask people who’ve been there for advice
Fail while daring greatly
Expect negative voices, and put them in their place
You’re not making a living, you’re making a life
Procrastination = narcissism
Perfection is the enemy of good
Stand for something
Aim for Fuck Off status
When you don’t know what to do, do ANYTHING
You can’t be it before you see it (I didn’t eat hommus until I knew it existed - Catherine Deveny)From now on, I’ll think of Alice when I am ever feeling stuck. :)
One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
PS
I lettered on my chalkboard one of my favourite quotes from Catherine Deveny’s hilarious presentation. It’s a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, but it is still so powerful. I made a desktop so you can download it to keep it front and centre in your mind! -
So it seems anything I draw coffee related is a hit, especially if it says “bitches”. A few people saw the instagram of my chalkboard practice and have requested it as a tshirt design!
I may just have to letter it up proper, but in the meantime, you can download a full size version for your desktop wallpaper here. Enjoy bitches! -
First chalk for the new studio!
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Happy Valentine’s Day honey bunches!
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My chalkboard just arrived! I love that drawing in chalk is so temporary and rustic. If you make a mistake, you just rub it out and start again. Ink feels so permanent, and I get anxious if I stuff it up.
More practice needed though.
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