5 Ways To Improve Your Hand Lettering Skills - Beginner Mistakes

Hand lettering

Feb 17

Have you ever felt like you are not making any progress?
You are giving your best but a little help would go a long way.

Improvement comes from either two ways:

Experimenting for a long time or
Learning from others

I am happy to share with you 5 beginner mistakes you can avoid and make your hand lettering pieces stand out more:

1. SPELLING

It doesn’t matter how awesome your lettering is, if it’s not spelled correctly, it’s just gonna throw off people.

Honestly, I’m terrible at spelling. I know I should get my work checked, but hey… I still forget words sometimes. These things happen, but it’s probably the easiest improvement you can make.

2. INCLINATION

As you can see, some of my older letters wear off in all different directions. Avoid this mistake by sketching out guide lines. Make sure every letter has the same angle.

Even plants direct themselves towards the sun.

3. WEIGHT

Consistency is really difficult when you are starting out. Okay, actually it remains difficult but you can get better with lots of practice.

You don’t have to create the same stroke weight (a so-called mono line or mono weight) but define how thin your thin strokes are and how thick your thick strokes shall be.

Letter Builder

Draw consistent letters with ease. The Letter Builder is a tool that we developed to help you maintain, size, width, thickness and style throughout a word.

4. BASELINE

Waves are awesome… for surfers and not for words. Make sure that your letters are on a continuous line. This will increase consistency and legibility.

Stefan Kunz – Improve your hand lettering skills – Baseline.png

The Grid Builder

The Grid Builder is a tool that helps you with your compositions and having all your letters aligned on one line. Use it on paper, your iPad, or in Photoshop.

5. BASICS (where Serifs and weights are)

I’ve always dragged out learning any kind of rules as long as possible. But that’s the easiest way to spot a rookie. You don’t have to be an expert. But learning where to add serifs and apply the weight of a letter will already help you graduate to the next level. Better yet, always have a cheat sheet at hand.

Now it’s your turn!

Stefan Kunz