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36 Days of Type (2019)
36 Days of Type
Writing this retrospectively means that remembering exactly who, or where, I found out about the 36 Days of Type. It could have been somewhere like Creative Bloq, or even lettering artists like Jessica Hische, Seb Lester, or Ian Bernard. But I can’t recall precisely where.
36 Days of Type was a challenge to draw a letter or number every day for 36 consecutive days.
It was the kind of once-a-year event that I would find out about after the event, swear to do it the next year, and then proceed to forget until it was over again.
But not in 2019.
At this point the “go hard or go home” mantra is probably pretty obvious. Why stop at a single letter, when it could be a launching pad to level up and work on my visual library of fonts and letterforms?
"So, you're putting these off?" "Yeah. Apparently." "Why?" "Lack of variation." "Lack of variation?" "This was meant to be a study of ligature forms across a string of styles. All that's been looked at - even though it's a wide category - is Script fonts." "What do you want to see more of?" "Base font types - serifs, san serifs. Even some blackletter varients and unical." Sketchbook notes, 2019
On with the Show
You can see just flipping through the sketchbook that it quickly tightened up from being a loose and aimless “draw as many types of <letter> as you can” to a very structured study with purpose:
- How is the capital <letter> presented across different fonts within five main font groups (Serif, Sanserif, Blackletter, Script, and Display)
- How is the lowercase <letter> presented across different fonts within the main font groups.
Each page was split into 5 rows, one for each font group. The challenge became less about just drawing a single letter and more about finding the ways in which letterforms were being drawn significantly different from each other, yet still recognizably that letter – which ironically meant paying more and more attention to the details. Unwittingly this was developing a skill that would come in handy when trying to identify or match fonts, as often has happened during my time at the printshop.
The final exercise came to 52 pages of letters (26 uppercase, 26 lowercase), with 10 pages of numbers (0-9, single-pages). And probably a little more than 36 Days.
Lyric Quest
Lyric Quest
A prelude of scrap paper sketches, digital noodlings on the ipad by hand, illustrator attempts with premade fonts, and one chunky notebook from Typo that had been filled with lyrics from a high school music collection all easily date back to 2015-2016. To say this was a new skillset and a new interest, would be foolish.
So in the wake of Lettering Sketchbook*, the Typism Creative Summit, and particularly the hiatus of Words By Bangtan* in September 2024, everything came together to embark on this project. Properly. Once and for all.
Lyric Quest.
The objective was, essentially, simple.
- Find lyrics that appealed
- Applying lettering to the phrase.
- Sketch, finalise, polish.
With the best of intentions I started 2024 buying 4 Midori dot-grid notebooks, having completed the Lettering Sketchbook course, intending to continue working on my lettering by gradually filling one book per quarter. Nice idea, terrible execution. December rolled around to my horror to realise I had barely finished one of the notebooks, let alone all four.
SKETCHBOOK SIDEQUEST
Three books, and 25 days (or so) to the end of the year. Each book had 28 pages, counting both sides of a paper sheet, for a total of 84 pages / 48 leaves. Eventually I split each page into quarters, queued up my library of liked songs, clicked shuffle, and hit play.
Some days were slow, some days were fast. Flipping through the books later is an experience of its own; between the subject matter that stuck out and the evolution of confidence in setting up pieces. In the end I was managing somewhere in the realms of 4 to 12 sketches a day (1 to 4 full pages), managing to finish 332 sketches by the 22nd of December.
Yeah, I’m still not sure how I did it either.
LYRIC QUEST – IT BEGINS
Sketchbook Sidequest fulfilled its purpose in establishing quite the future backlog of pieces to work through.
The project is ongoing – there are no guarantees that all 332 will be completed.
Typism Skills Summit 2024
Typism Skills Summit 2024
A 2022 post by lettering artist Ian Barnard put me onto the Typism books and by extension, the Typism Community. Based out of the Gold Coast, Australia, Typism is not only a community hub full of inspiration, but resources and skill summits. Subsequently I signed up for their newsletter, and pre-ordered a physical copy of Typism Book 8.
Two years later, as I was finishing up final projects for Lettering Sketchbook*, the 2024 Typism Skills Summit rolled around. It was perfect; I had built up some basic skills during the sketchbook course, and the summit was taking place over a long weekend. At some point between signing up for a free ticket and day 1, I decided to splurge the extra $60USD or so to upgrade to the VIP ticket and get all the extra bonus freebies, brushes, worksheets, and newsletter sign ups.
I sat down on January 26th for Day 2 with a hot cup of tea and some old sketchbooks with blank pages to fill:
It was time to level up.
1. SKILL UP: COMPOSITION
Vinithra Mammen’s talk about ways to create balanced lettering compositions got me started on taking the theory I was picking up throughout the days’ lectures and applying it in practice. She was the last speaker for Day 2 – so afterwards I could mess around with the prompt she gave viewers (“Better Every Day”). It was a good excuse to work outside of my comfort zone, at the time I had done very few lettering pieces digitaly. It turned out well – and to my surprise, even recieved a featured shout out in the Typism blog post (“Celebrating artwork from the Typism Skill Summit“).
Bonus EXP: Digital Lettering (+1)
2. SKILL UP: BOXY LETTERS
Day 3 featured Liz Volpi Impastatio’s creative workshop around Boxy Letters, creating fun and quirky cards for Valentine’s Day. The chunky, big lettering style reminded me of the “carve it out” exercise in Joanna Muñoz’s Lettering Sketchbook course. The examples were bright and fun, and I aimed to carry that across into my practice piece.
Bonus EXP: Digital Lettering (+1)
Because I started a day late, I caught up on Day 1’s lectures after the summit officially ‘ended’. And at the end of the last talk, I made a list of things I wanted to practice from the summit. Practice projects, to reinforce what I’d heard and made notes about.
3. SKILL UP: 3D LETTERING
Nico Ng’s talk touched on ways to simplify 3D Lettering, narrowing it down to three key types – Oblique, Isometric, and Perspective. Of course, that meant to put what he spoke about into practice, I had to do three pieces. One for each type he covered. Though I might have to revisit this again…
EXP: 3D Lettering (+3)
Status ailment: ??? Perspective ???? Math ????
4. SKILL UP: SCRIPT LETTERING
While there were several script lettering speakers at the summit, Thomas Hoyer and Maria Montes’ talks particularly resonated. Hoyer’s talk focused around flourishes, the lines and loops and angles, which paired nicely with the “Principles of Script Lettering” introduction from Montes. I got to pull out a few different pen types and play around in these notebooks, before throwing down pencils for another practice piece to call this skill check-in complete.
Bonus EXP: Loop-y Loop (+1)
5. SKILL UP: TYPE EVOLUTION
Technically Jimbo Bernaus’s workshop exercise only asked for a single evolution stream; a san-serif split into bold and slanted, a serif split into contrasted and condensed. And then the results recombined. But if you read Skill Up 3, you can see where this is going, right? Yeah. The talk was called “Letter evolution: Build letters with confidence“, and this was me. Building confidence. Because if I learnt anything from the 36 Days of Lettering** project, it’s that not all letters (or fonts) are the same.
EXP: Letterform Structure (+1)
7. SKILL UP: BLACKLETTER CALLIGRAPHY
Blackletter calligraphy was another topic that stuck out to me from the three day summit, especially talks from Tamer Goniem demonstrating techniques with colour inks, and Jacqueen Ortiz-Nunog’s dive into Blackletter. Using the supplemental worksheets from Jacq’s bundle goodies, I dived into playing around with the calligraphy brushes I had on hand to go over the drills supplied for stroke control and muscle memory (because, as seen in exhibit 3 and 5, we have form. Worth doing once, worth doing thrice).
With the strokes reinforced, I pulled out my copy of Medieval Calligraphy to reference stroke orders for font samples pulled from the 13th to 15th centuries (“Gothic Textura Quadrata”). These styles were closer in line with Tamer and Jacq’s works than the earlier Unical styles also covered in the book. Following stroke order for the blackletter fonts was oddly familiar, and it took me a while before realising it’s because drawing Kanji characters follows a similar pattern where being drawn (and catalogued) relies heavily on specific strokes.
I still am yet to pull out the nibs and nib holders to mess around with ink for ink’s sake – but playing around with Artline Calligraphy Pens and making other markers confirm to blackletter strokes has proven therapeutic enough as a starting point.
EXP: Traditional Penmanship (+1)
Note: Pages of columns of Blackletter calligraphy are from 2025, recreated in the same style as original exercises from 2024.
8. SKILL UP: DARK LETTERING
Initially just based on the talk’s title I was expecting Noeko’s Dark Lettering to be another variation on blackletter calligraphy, like Tamer and Jacq’s talks. I was quickly proven wrong, and the influence of heavy music in the work she presented piqued my interest even more. How to give letters those darker, sharper shapes and where (or what) to emphasise when it came to specific parts of letterforms.
(I need to visit this again – I may have flown a little too close to the sun here and gone from “dark lettering fun” to “needs to refer to notes to understand what it means”)
Bonus EXP: Circle Math (+1)
9. SKILL UP: VICTORIAN LETTERING
And of course I saved my favourite style for last – Sushimoon’s Victorian Lettering workshop. I was looking forward to this one, having played with more decorative fonts out of old Letraset books and gems like the Vintage Type Graphics book I picked up from the university store many moons ago.
Needless to say I had some fun with these.
EXP: Nostalgia Lettering +1
IN CONCLUSION:
While it took me much longer to get through all the talks than just the three days it ran for, needless to say I got a lot out of the Typism Skills Summit. It pushed me to try new things, or approach skills I already had in a different way. There are definitely pieces that came out of this that I’m still proud of two years later, and no doubt it has gone on to inform my lettering practice since.
Summit Results: +11 EXP Digital Lettering +46 EXP Traditional Lettering (Pencil, Pens) Skill Level Up! - Composition - Boxy Letters - 3D Lettering (Isometric, Oblique, Perspective) - Script Lettering (Flourishes) - Font Fusion/Evolution - Blackletter Calligraphy (Calligraphy Pen, Key Strokes, Font Styles) - Victorian Lettering (Ascenders, Descenders) New Skills Acquired! - Dark Lettering (Horizontal, Round)
TO FIND OUT MORE…
– Typsim Community: https://www.typismcommunity.com/
– Typism Summit: https://www.typismsummit.com/
– Ian Barnard: Instagram / Linktree / Youtube / Resources
– Vinithra Mam: Instagram / Linktree / Website
– Liz Volpi Impastatio: Instagram / Links / Website
– Nico Ng: Instagram / Website
– Thomas Hoyer: Instagram / Website
– Maria Montes: Instagram / Linktree / Website / Educational Resources
– Jimbo Bernaus: Instagram / Educational Resources
– Tamer Goniem: Instagram / Website / Educational Resources
– Jacqueen Ortiz-Nunog: Instagram / Links / Website
– Noeko: Instagram / Links / Website
– Sushimoon: Instagram / Links / Website
*Lettering Sketchbook – Blog post to come, a Domestika course by Joanna Muñoz. Completed during 2023/24.
**36 Days of Type – Blog post to come. Inspired by the 36 Days of Type a study looking at different lettershapes and forms across capitals and lowercase characters, across a range of typefaces. Completed May-June 2019.
Song lyric references in the above pieces include:
The Freak Show by YUNGBLUD, Deep End by I Prevail, Read Between The Lines by Tom Cardy, Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, Caramelldansen by Caramell, What Does the Fox Say by Ylvis, Deja Vu by Tomorrow x Together, and Merry Go Round by Yui
