Hand-drawing Type

First, I thought about what sanctuary means to me. I started to think of gates, into a sanctuary, and the word popping out of the gate, but I didn't like the designs on paper. They seemed a little basic to me, so I thought about fonts. A way to be creative with the font and design, I realised, was putting the font into the gate, and have the rest of the text underneath. I'm still playing with it, and perfecting my final text and designing, so stay tuned.

Today, we learned about drawing fonts, to get creative with text in your own. I like designing font as it's personal, and can fit whatever you're trying to design perfectly. I did start looking at fonts online, and sketching them out, until I just started sketching my own. These were really fun to design and copy, and I know I can keep adding to this page throughout my book. It's also a really useful skill to have as a publisher, to show clients exactly
what you can imagine - something you can't do through Abode.

I decided to design the fonts in black, white and grey to start, so I could get to grips with the differences. I added colours to the page to look pretty.

Next, we had a task: either design a psychedelic poster, or a personal tattoo. This really excited me, as I have actually designed tattoos (drafts, mind you) for my friends. So, I chose to design myself a tattoo based from one of my favourite quotes: "Sanctuary: a small, safe place in a troubling world." Personally, I always prefer basic tattoos, so if I were to get the tattoo I would probably get it in typewriter font. However, I wanted to be a little more creative, so I designed a more abstract tattoo.

When I think of sanctuary, I thought of places - and private places at that. This made me think of gates (like in private areas), so I started to sketch different gates, until I came up with the right-hand photo design. This is an overhead gate with words made into the top. I liked this idea and it suited the text also - which was a basic, serif, hand-drawn font.

I decided to make this digital to complete it, but I like to put things into Procreate in my iPad (mostly because it was expensive), so I ill write another blog post updating you on that.