Illustrative lettering, by definition, lives at the beautiful intersection of typography and illustration. It blends the aesthetic sensibility of the type designer with the creative edge of the artist and the narrative magic of the storyteller. This latter property is incredibly important, particularly in understanding the broader cultural and social relevance of illustrative lettering as a tool of self-expression and a storytelling medium.
Hand-drawn type and letter embellishments are arguably as old as the history of modern communication itself, beginning with the invention of the phonetic alphabet and ending with the logotypes of today’s hottest tech brands, passing through the meticulous calligraphy of the Renaissance and the stunning Victorian engravings of the 19th century. But it isn’t until the mid-20th-century that illustrative lettering truly begins to tell a story, not merely a design story but a cultural one as well.
An Antidote to Minimalist Typographic Trends
In the 1960’s, a certain minimalism took hold in the design world as the exports of Japanese aestheticism reached the West, the clean lines of Western European design crossed international borders, and every science textbook, every street sign, every concert poster was set in Helvetica. And while the now-iconic typeface may have sprouted a near-cultish following, what began as a reactionary rebellion against the superfluous decor of eras past resulted in a counterculture of its own.
Designers began embracing illustrative lettering as an antidote to the commoditized sterility of Helvetica. What started as innovative and radical ended up contrived and overused, prompting designers to invent a new breed of illustrative lettering that channelled this frustration with the sea of sterile sameness and begin to use type as a creative canvas.
Embracing Expressive Typography
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the more imaginative and illustrative approaches to lettering of past eras – Art Nouveau, Victorian typography, Art Deco – experience a resurgence, a reinvention in which artists and designers blended existing aesthetics and really embraced typography as a medium of self-expression and social commentary in an age of counterculture, flamboyance, and social revolution.
Victorian Lettering from 1864, German Chromolithographer, Louis Prang & Co.
Leading the way in this new design movement was Paula Scher, who built an entire career out of her hate for Helvetica.
“I thought the typeface Helvetica was the cleanest, most boring, most Fascistic, really repressive typeface. And I hated everything that was designed in Helvetica.” – Paula Scher
Scher began designing record covers that mixed up Victorian design, with pop, with Art Nouveau to a brilliantly vibrant and playful effect, which she later translated to her iconic illustrative lettering on everything from performance posters to magazine covers. Defying the line structure of traditional typography, her type told a story, a populist tale of sticking-it-to-the-man reactionary exuberance.
Much of Scher’s work had to do with the music industry – record sleeves, Broadway posters, music magazine covers – and its influence can be traced to the contemporary use of illustrative lettering in the same intersection of the arts where her career began: Music artwork.
A Visual Vehicle for a Creative Narrative
Today, some of the most exciting work in illustrative lettering happens precisely there – in album artwork, concert posters and band t-shirts. This relationship goes back to the storytelling and self-expression capacity of illustrative lettering, something fundamental to music culture on both sides of the production-consumption scale.
For artists, an album has a creative narrative that its artwork needs to communicate, and a poster captures the implicit story of what the artist’s music stands for; illustrative lettering becomes a brilliant visual vehicle for conveying these stories. For fans, a band t-shirt is a medium of self-expression, a canvas on which they get to frame the stories they tell about themselves to the world through the badge of their music taste. Where pure typography sends a static message, illustrative lettering tells a dynamic story of this self-expression.
Gig posters are a particularly rich source of illustrative lettering today. The best of them manage to preserve the artist’s recognizable name and identity, while wrapping it in a layer of whimsy and excitement that parallels the promise of a live show – and that’s exactly what illustrative lettering does, it keeps the core message readable and recognizable while drawing a mood and a story around it.
Compelling Illustrative Lettering Artwork
Some compelling examples: Designer Mikey Burton’s posters for Spoon, Wilco and Trombettas make brilliant integrative use of lettering and illustration so that neither dominates but, rather, the two tell a cohesive story together; Minneapolis studio Aesthetic Aparatus‘ work for Dark Meat and A.C. Newman is an absolute visual treat; FloraFauna, a design office and print operation hybrid also in Minneapolis, has a wide array of gems, including posters for Peter Bjorn & John, Handsome Furs and Tapes ‘N Tapes; Barcelona-based designer Alex Trochut is a master of 3D illustrative lettering – his concert poster for The Decembrists and album artwork for The Rolling Stones speak volumes about the medium’s creative potential.
Dark Meat Poster, by Aesthetic Aparatus
Cover Lettering for the Rolled Gold PLUS Album of the Rolling Stones, by Alex Trochut
Holy Grail of Creativity
Music artwork is just one example of the expressive capacity of illustrative lettering, but its storytelling power extends into just about every aspect of culture. Ultimately, illustrative lettering reconciles the best of two very different worlds – it takes the ability of illustration to tell an imaginative and abstract story, and tames it with typography’s penchant for the concrete message, producing a powerful punch of controlled flamboyance. And isn’t that the holy grail of all creativity?
Step 6
Create two small circles on guide 2, which will show the location of the nipples, the distance between the nipples is equal to the head height (90 pixels).
Step 7
Create axial lines of the legs. Let’s start with the hips. The hips are located at a certain angle to each other and reach to the horizontal 6. The knee of the right straight leg should be over the horizontal 6, the bent knee of the left leg should be placed below this horizontal. The knees are marked as ellipses. Now create the axial line of the shin. The shin of the left leg is shorter than one of the right leg, as the leg is bent and it is farther from the viewer.
Step 8
Draw the contours of the legs with straight lines. The hip narrows towards the knee, then the shin broadens down the knee in the shape of gastrocnemius muscle and then narrows again towards the foot.
Step 9
Now schematically draw the arms. Green line indicates the axis of the shoulder, the red line is the axis of the forearm. We assumed that the elbow is slightly higher the guide 3 (above the navel) in fact this is the way it is, you can check this out on your own figure. Hand is slightly higher the middle line (guide 4).
The girl will keep her hands on the sides, turn the green line clockwise relating to the point D, using the Rotate Tool (R). The hand in this position will be taken back a little bit, so the distance of DF will shorten to DG. Move the upper point of the forearm to the point G and turn it relating to this point. Using the same technique build the axial lines of the left hand.
Step 10
Draw the contours of the hands with straight lines. The arm narrows towards the elbow and from elbow towards the wrist.
Step 11
Draw the contour of the neck with straight lines, the blue arrows show the line bounding the trapezius muscle.
Step 12
Thus, the diagram is ready, lock the layer. Create a new layer called ‘Body’ over the ‘Diagram’ layer. In this layer we will create the body of a girl, guided by the points and lines of the diagram, as the visual aid I chose the red color as the color of the stroke, work using the Pen Tool (P).
Step 13
It will be convenient for our work if we create the body, arms, and legs as separate objects.
Step 14
Take the Ellipse Tool (L) and create breasts and position them in place.
Step 15
Now create hands. Using the Pen Tool (P) create the shape of a hand. Create Art Brush for the fingers. Using the Pen Tool (P) create the shape shown on the picture below; now drag this shape to the Brushes palette. Using the Pen Tool (P) draw the axis lines of the fingers and apply the created brush. Select the fingers and go to Object> Expand Appearance, then select the fingers and wrist, and press Add from pathfinder box. Using the same technique, create another hand.
Step 16
Now create the feet. Using the Pen Tool (P) create the shape of a foot and join this shape with a shin, using the Pathfinder box. Create another foot the same way.
Step 17
Fill all the shapes with the colour of your choice, I’ve used light brown (C3, M36, Y63 and K0) and outline with a black stroke in order to see the contours of the body, the stroke will be deleted later.
Step 18
Work out the details starting with the head. Take the template from the tutorial Modeling the Human Face in Illustrator and place it in the right place. Create the face, using the tips of this tutorial.
Step 19
Let us take a quick break from the body and create a background. Create a layer and name it ‘BG’, position it below all the layers. Now take the Rectangle Tool (M) and create a rectangle in the size of the document. Fill the rectangle with a linear gradient containing three colors: white, sky-blue, and blue.
Step 20
Feel less tired? Let’s get back to work. Suppose that the light source is to the left of the girl, therefore, the lights will be on the left and the shadows – on the right. Let us review the techniques of creating shadows. Create the shape of shadow with the pen (color shade (C10, M50, Y73 and K0). Copy the shape of shadow and paste it in back, deform as shown on the picture below, the fill color of this shape is the same as the color of the skin (see step 18). Select both shapes and apply the Blend (Object> Blend> Make ), set the Smooth Color in the dialog box.
Now copy the shape of the body and paste it in front, move up the copy in the layers palette so that it seems higher than Blend. Select the upper body shape and the blend and go to Object> Clipping Mask> Make. If you do not like the result, you can always edit original shapes included in the Blend using the Direct Selection Tool (A).
Step 21
Thus, we have created all the shadows and lights on the body of the girl. There are a few stages of creating shadows and lights on the pictures below. Notice that I use the color (C0, M27, Y50 and K0) as the color of the light areas. You can use a linear or radial gradient on some easy sections. Red arrows on the picture below show the location of lights, and the blue ones show the location of shadows.
Conclusion
I hope that through simple and understandable methods offered in this tutorial, you will realize that it is quite possible to draw a nice human figure. Work hard and if you learn to draw people, you can draw almost anything. But remember, the secret to success is perseverance.
