Digitising your Lettering with Claire Coullon

Digitise Your Lettering is a 2.5 hour workshop packed with a live demonstration, hands-on practice, tips & tricks and guidance to learn how to turn your lettering into a digital design.

Have you been doing calligraphy and lettering for a while, but always wondered how to make your designs digital? Or maybe you’ve given it a try, but it always loses its magic when turned into vectors? This workshop will introduce you to 2 methods to turn your calligraphy and hand lettering into beautiful, versatile digital designs.

We’ll start with brief overview of the Live Trace method to create a digital trace of your design. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of this technique, and how to know when it’s best suited. For this, we ask that you bring a piece of ink calligraphy, brush lettering or pen drawing - more on this below.

The second demonstration will guide you through how to vector your lettering manually using industry standard vector techniques in Adobe Illustrator. Learn how to use the pen tool, understand correct point placement, vector best practices and how to solve common issues. Using a range of typographic tips and tricks, you’ll learn how to identify and correct issues with spacing, weight, typographic colour and scalability to produce a digital lettering piece that keeps all the character of your original work, but with all the flexibility of digital artwork.

This workshop is best suited to those who have some experience with the basics of lettering - any Meticulous Ink calligraphy or lettering workshop will give you a great starting point! You don’t need to have used Adobe Illustrator before, although you may find it helpful to be already familiar with Adobe software.

We ask that you please bring:

• A laptop with Adobe Illustrator installed (free trials are available) You are of course welcome to use any vector software of your choice, but the demonstration will use Illustrator.
• One piece of calligraphy, brush lettering or a pen drawing. This should be solid black & white. Ideally, please bring a scan/top down photograph of your lettering on your laptop.
• One piece with the word “Bath”. This can be done in any lettering method you’d like, whether that’s calligraphy, brush lettering, pencil drawing, etc. This is the piece we’ll be vectoring together.
• Don’t worry if you don’t have these pieces or if you don’t feel comfortable bringing your own: we’ll have example lettering pieces you are very welcome to use instead!
• Please note you are welcome to join without a laptop and just watch and/or take notes.

The workshop will be taught by Meticulous Ink’s brush lettering expert Claire Coullon. With 15 years of experience creating logotypes and lettering, she’s been teaching workshops for over 7 years and co-runs the sustainable children’s stationery brand Odd Goose.

Details:

Is there an age limit for the workshop?
Anyone can attend our workshops, though unfortunately we do not allow children under 12. Those under 16 we do request are accompanied by an adult. Please do get in touch if you'd like to discuss.

What should I bring?
You don't need anything - we'll provide everything you need for this workshop.

What are my transport/parking options getting to you?
There is parking in Bath in several locations - the nearest to Walcot Chapel would be the Podium car park or the Cattlemarket car park. Train services to Bath Spa are very regular and the walk to Walcot Chapel takes around 25 minutes.

Cancellation Terms
Please ensure you can attend the workshop before booking, as tickets for the On Paper Festival are non-refundable and non-transferable. If you are ill, shipwrecked, or unable to attend for any other reason, we are unable to swap your date, though you are more than welcome to find a friend that can take your place.