Thinking about illustration inevitably calls to mind images of pencils and sketchpads and an analog, old-school creative process. There’s a certain charm to hand-drawn images, an intimate bridge between artist and page. But the digital age has brought its own magnetism to the illustrative process, liberating artists to do more than they ever could before and offering an entirely new platform for self-expression.

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Learning to letter by hand is a journey, or at least it has been for me. Starting with a passion for letters and typography, I experimented with tracing type, fitting letters into unusual spaces, and discovering how to pull words and styles together cohesively. It can take quite some time for your compositions to come together, your focus tighten, and your voice to develop.

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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.

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My name is Jonny Wan and I am a freelance illustrator based in the UK. My style is based upon shape experimentation, patterns and textures and I draw inspiration from ancient cultures and civilizations. More recently I have rekindled my love for type and now developing a way of working with type that is congruent with my illustrative style so the two can work in tandem when applied to commissions that requires both.

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Since you were a wee little tyke, you probably were taught that letters are for reading. We all have spent countless hours learning how to write letters, form words, and eventually read big huge books. Which obviously is a very much needed skill for our topic at hand, but in-order to develop a true passion for illustrative lettering you have to see letters.

In this article I’d like to present some thoughts and theories that I use for creating illustrative lettering. I will show samples and explain a bit of the background info to further emphasize my thoughts. The goal is to simply supply some insight and hopefully a bit of inspiration.

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Hi, I’m Chris and I’m addicted to creating bizarre characters. I’ve got a real soft spot for strange and surreal beasts, hybridized creatures, and mutated animals. Some people might call what I do “random,” but there’s actually a good deal of thought and sometimes even planning that goes into designing the characters that end up in my artwork. Let’s take a peek inside my twisted character design methodology.

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