How I became a lettering artist

Typographers, font designers and lettering artists each find their way to lettering along different trajectories and different timelines. My love of letters began through handwriting cards to my grandparents and receiving handwritten letters in return. From a young age, I associated writing to other people akin to giving and receiving love and care. You can read more about this emotive connection on my blog post, Why I became a lettering artist.

The how I became a lettering artist is closely aligned to five key milestones along a timeline that spans decades.

1. I learnt calligraphy

Learning calligraphy offered more than just the ability to write beautifully; it taught me the intricate relationship between shapes, strokes, proportion, pressure, angles, and spacing. It taught me to write slower, enhanced my creative skillset, and provided a calm, meditative outlet that put me in a state of flow. It inspired me to try new and different mediums, such as watercolour, gouache, pastels and paint.

Over time, calligraphy helped develop my flourished lettering style, and boosted my knowledge and confidence in the practical & aesthetic aspects of lettering. When I look back, I can see how every calligraphy stroke and group project laid the foundation for me to pivot to typography and murals later.

2. I studied design and experimented with different mediums

Pivoting from marketing to design meant, for me, returning to university to learn animation, photography, typography, and all the skills associated with being a designer. Living on the Gold Coast, I was blessed to have one of Australia’s leading design universities close-by, the Queensland College of Art and Design led by Dr Dominique Falla. Dominique is the creator of the Typism conference, summits and books, which provided me another avenue to learn and participate in lettering.

My university course covered many topics, namely motion graphics, typography, and public art murals. Experimenting was at the forefront of every project, and students were encouraged to showcase their personal style. I applied lettering and quotes to wood, walls, skin, paper, canvas, acrylic, even an old fibreboard suitcase!

I put my lettering onto products. Try this yourself by writing or painting on items you have at home.

I converted my hand lettering to illustrations, vector art, and animations. Try this yourself by writing a quote then painting or animating it.

3. I attended and taught lettering workshops

When I first started learning calligraphy, I had a private tutor but wanted to connect with likeminded letterers. I joined the Gold Coast calligraphy club, the Brisbane calligraphy club and, later, the Buderim calligraphy club. Workshops were filled with inspiring talented teachers who boosted my confidence, and I learnt about historic writing, illumination, page layout and typographic principles. Sadly, the GC and Brisbane clubs both folded in the late 2010’s, but the Buderim club, who uniquely met fortnightly, grew to include bookbinding, paper marbling, embossing and bi-annual exhibitions. Buderim gave me an opportunity to teach chalk pastel lettering, and this was my first foray into teaching. I developed a brush lettering workshop, which I took on the road in 2018, teaching in Brisbane, Lismore, Sydney, Wagga Wagga, Toowoomba, and the Gold Coast. Teaching refined my skills, built my expertise and helped me connect with Australia’s creative community.

After Covid, I reignited my love of travel and typography by moving interstate to take on post-graduate study in type design at the University of Newcastle under the tutelage of Wayne Thompson, Ulrike Rausch and Mark van Wageningen. For eleven months, I was immersed in the world of colour fonts and colour theory, graduating with First Class Honours in Visual Communications. When I returned to Queensland, I looked to take my lettering to new heights and set about exploring murals. Seeing my words on walls really excites me and I attended workshops with Mural Nomad, Patrycja Hannagan, to level up my designs on a large scale. This culminated in a 5.76sqm mobile mural called Coastal Futures, and a 6m wide fence mural, Thrive. Transforming creative spaces is my goal, and to keep giving back to the creative community. For me, learning never ends. “Your mind is your greatest asset. Invest in it, and it will pay you back for a lifetime.”

4. I played word games

Scrabble was the game of choice at home, along with word puzzles that challenged the brain. Many a night was spent, just my mother and I, Scrabbling and seeing who could muster up an impressive 7-letter word for an extra 50 points. We would giggle at wordplay and come up with word jokes, and this formed a deeper love of letters and language.

One day, my mother brought home a pictogram book where the words were illustrated to represent themselves (e.g. the word house was shaped like a house). Mum started her own pictograms on a sheet of white cardboard. Being a talented sketch artist, she drew the word Melt to look like it was melting; then illustrated Sharp starting wide then narrowing down to a point. Bounce was round and looked like it was bouncing. She ended up with approximately 40 words illustrated as pictures, and I thought she was amazing — both her drawing skills and ability to make words look the way they sounded. This stayed with me for a long time and, I believe, was instrumental in the creation of my ambigrams and Type Down Under exhibition at l’Association Typographique Internationale. Bringing words to life in colour and as illustrations became a way for me to express myself, and share my love of letters with the world.

5. I learnt font software

Learning type design is a truly detailed task, one I am still mastering. I learnt to create a colour font in Glyphs — it’s a powerful tool expanding creative possibilities to help build a specialised skillset in typography. There are several methods of learning professional font software: KABK teaches typeface design in Glyphs; Cooper Union Extended Program teaches Robofont; and there are other platforms such as Fontlab.

In 2024, I ventured around the world from Brisbane to New York, then Berlin, Torino, Japan and back to Brisbane on a typographic adventure. Along the way, I experienced emerging type design platforms, attending the Fontra full-day workshop at New York’s Typographics Conference. Fontra is a live editing platform where multiple users can work on the same font in real time. Our group of four split tasks into easy segments: body, serifs, ascenders/descenders, and punctuation. By the end of the day, we had a basic working typeface! At Berlin Letters, Fontself showcased how easy it is to create a font on the iPad. Fontra’s tablet platform makes lettering mobile and turns letterforms into vector fonts through the power of an Apple Pencil.

In Torino, I explored the tranquil Italian waterway and countryside, finding beautiful signage and books that inspired my heart and spirit. Comparing handcrafted Italian signage with the technicality of font software was like chalk and cheese, yet so inter-related, like witnessing the beginning of time and the end of time (in terms of the typographic world, at least). Whichever platform you choose for type design, know that there is a method and means to suit every designer, whether it’s a smaller typeface on iPad or a vast superfamily in Glyphs — any lettering idea can come to life. Click the links to find your best path.