Introduction to Lettering with Procreate

You don't need to have good handwriting to create beautiful digital lettering. The key is simply to draw and experiment, something that Daniel Hosoya—advertising designer specializing in letter creation—wholly enjoys every time he lands a commission that turns into a work of art.

In Digital Lettering with Illustrator and Photoshop, he taught you to create compositions combining different styles of letters. In this second course, faithful to the digital drawing of letters, he invites you to venture a step further and create letters with Procreate, the drawing app designed exclusively for iPad. Discover the basic workings of the application, create brushes to obtain your own customized strokes, and give the entire process a go to create a lettering piece based on the name of your favorite song.

Begin by meeting Daniel Hosoya, who talks about his passions and most noteworthy projects. He also shares the main references that have inspired him throughout his professional career.

Now dive headfirst into the world of Procreate! Learn how its interface works and the basic functions to help you create shortcuts to make your work easier. Then take a closer look at the most important aspects of this creative tool.

Next up, learn about brushes— the ones included in the application and how to modify them to make them more personal as well as how to export external brushes. Also see the basic properties for creating your own brushes and achieving different letters with original strokes.

Before starting to design, define the style of the phrase you want to compose using a mood board and discover the basic classification of letters to start exploring your ideas and make sure your first sketches have a solid base.
Later on, do some exercises to learn the basic structure of Script, Sans, and Serif letters, and put together typographic grids to help you draw your letters with precision, to be modified in the future.

Wrap up the course by working on the final design with Daniel's guidance, applying different types of volumes, shadows, ornaments, and textures and add the finishing touches to really make your artwork pop.

Create a lettering piece inspired by the name of a song in Procreate. Daniel designs Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly with Me", but you can choose any song you like.

Designers, lyricists, illustrators, cartoonists, calligraphers, and anyone who wants to learn new techniques to create digital letters.

To take this course you need a foundation in design or typography and basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator.
You also need drawing supplies, an iPad and a compatible Apple Pencil, and Procreate as well as a computer with vector design software installed.