Lettering 01 Course: Design Master Nils Lindstrom | Learn Typography From A Master Letterform Artist

Key Takeaways

my name is Nils Lindstrom I'm a letter form artist I've been teaching type and letter form for 30 years at the Art Center College of design in Pasadena California a letterform artist is a little bit different than a calligrapher or a sign painter in that we don't use the same tools but we work in the same medium this course is for practicing graphic designers and aspiring graphic designers who want to improve their drawing skills and their understanding of typography I think the most important thing you'll learn in this course is the relationship between the body and type type has always been drawn by The Hand by the arm and in fact many of the letter forms the parts of the letter forms are named after parts of the body you're going to learn how to see you can't draw what you can't see and you can't see what you don't know so it's a course in learning to pay attention it's a course in practicing the art part of what I call Visual athleticism that is matching a shape matching a proportion precisely the way it is this course contains eight videos that include the origins of the Roman alphabet the evolution of type into what we consider modern typography today there'll be two chalk demos where I will draw a old style serif and a blackl style and demonstrate the correct drawing of each character of the alphabet there will be sketching in ideation and refinement of a script logotype with flourishes in decorative elements and we will scan that I will walk you through and talk you through the vectorizing and digitization of that logo in Adobe Illustrator there are handouts and assignments there is a demonstration on how to draw type precisely the way it is in a book and then a demonstration and videos describing how to manipulate type properly how to weight it up how to change the character width how to slant type without the pitfalls of what the computer would do so the challenge for you as an aspiring graphic designer or a practicing One Is to learn to see typography like you've never seen it before 90% of graphic design deals with typography so you need to understand the origins of it the rationale and the logic the best way to do that is to draw type [Music]