Digital Hand Lettering and Modern Calligraphy

by Shelly Kim

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Digital Hand Lettering and Modern Calligraphy is a tutorial guide for both beginning hand calligraphers as well as readers looking to expand their options with digitizing their hand-lettered paper projects and manipulating them with graphics software.

Due out 27th August from Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 144 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This was an interesting niche book for both calligraphy and digital image manipulation. The author presupposes no previous experience with calligraphy and spends a fair bit of page content showing the tools and supplies needed for practice and progress.

The book is split into four main sections. The first 25% of the book contains illustrated hand lettering practice pages and alphabet tutorials. There are both script and non-script alphabets illustrated as well as a very short tutorial on negative space, flourishes, and placement.

The next 3 sections cover digitizing on different platforms and for different uses. The tutorials include specific screen by screen instructions for scanning, cleaning up, and manipulating the images. About 20% of the page content (section 4) contains step-by-step tutorials for projects including using foil letter on a laminating machine, digital silhouette cameo machine with vinyl letters, printed card-stock name tags, and 5 others. All of the included tutorials result in -gorgeous- and professional looking finished projects. They had me itching to drag out my laminating machine and (literally) sent me online comparison shopping for a silhouette cameo machine!

This is an inspirational and well made book. This would be perfect for papercrafters, scrapbookers, fabric crafters (with heat transfer), and so many other media (decoupage, furniture refinishing, pyrography, glass painting, jewelry).

The book also includes an inspiration gallery (and it is inspirational), along with a links section, slanted toward readers in North America, a short author artist's statement/bio, and an index.

Really an interesting concept. There are masses of books on calligraphy, and no dearth of books on digitizing. Combining both into a specific focus in one volume was wonderful.

Five stars. I'm impressed.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.