How to Create Hand Drawn Typography

Hand drawn typography is all the rage right now and really — what’s not to love about it? Someone has poured their heart into creating a piece of art from beautiful words and I know that I’ve personally loved getting a chance to make some pieces to hang around my home and to share with you all. Here’s the thing though — putting yourself out there to make your very own hand drawn typography isn’t as scary as it seems and I promise that anyone can make their own art in a few simple steps.

Preface: Practice Makes Perfect.

I feel that while this isn’t a specific step in creating your own piece of art, it is a key building block to creating something that you’ll be happy with in the long run. Just as you had to practice when you were learning a new math fact or a new sport growing up, you’ll need to dedicate some quality time to improving your handwriting abilities before you set out to create your first piece of art.

Take your time in figuring out how to create the strokes for each letter and how you want the letters to move across the page. Don’t rush the process!

1. Rough Draft

When you feel like you’ve got a good grasp on how your handwriting looks, create a rough draft of how you’d like the quote you’ve chosen to look when all is said and done. Do this step on plain copy paper or something similar so it’s easy to erase and re-work as needed.

2. Pencil

When you’ve got your rough draft complete, it’s time to bust out the nicer paper or card stock that you’d like to use for the final product. Use a pencil to draw the quote on your chosen paper and take your time. Once you move on from this step, it’s nearly impossible to change things up.

3. Permanent Marker

Trace the pencil drawing with a permanent marker of your choice. You could use something as simple as a standard Sharpie marker or use a fancier calligraphy pen. I used Sharpie for this particular print, but I’m looking forward to using a much nicer pen in the near future.

4. Erase

Once you’ve got the entire quote traced like a boss, use a good quality eraser to get rid of all of the stray pencil lines that were left over. I’m partial to the old, reliable Pink Pearl eraser.

5. Permanent Marker (again)

Now’s the time to put the finishing touches on your print. I chose to thicken the lettering on my print and because I had shaky hands towards the end of the tracing step, some of my lines needed some straightening after my hand had a smidge of a timeout.

And here she is.

Because I’m good with sharing, I offered this print up as a free download on this post about why handwriting is important to me, so feel free to get it for yourself.