3 Ways to Instantly Achieve Better Lettering

Hey there.

Wanna know how to up your lettering game? Spacing plays a crucial part to achieving an amazing lettered piece. It can literally make or break a piece. That’s why I decided to share my top 3 tips to help get better results. I’m still working to consistently master spacing in my lettering, but when I implement these tips in my lettering I definitely notice a difference. And if you follow my advice you will too.

Tip #1 Use a Ruler

As I thought of this one I did chuckle a bit due to the simple fact that:

I don’t like measurements of any kind.

When I think about it, I’ve never liked them. I can remember plenty of times in school were I wound up confused because of them. So when I even hear the word “measure” I instantly get a sense of dread. So you can imagine my surprise when I added this to the list.

I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes trying to get precision and exact measurements can make me feel less creative. But the impact it makes in your lettering is worth it. And in terms of getting even and clean spacing, precision is EXACTLY what you need.

In fact, when I started using a ruler in my lettering I really noticed an improvement. The ruler allows you to get consistent line spacing, word spacing and letter spacing. There’s a ton more that we could say about this but that’s another topic for a separate blog post (consider adding more or writing the other blog post and linking it.)

Tip # 2 Use a Pencil

This one may seem too easy to believe but sometimes the best solutions are the easiest. One of the best features of the pencil is its most obvious one:

It can be erased.

If you use the pencil with the ruler it’s a power combo. Think Tekken or Mortal Kombat (or any other fighting game) when you string together the perfect attack combinations most times there’s an added bonus. In lettering your added bonus is the fact that you’ll have a clean, design lettered piece.

But using the pencil alone without a ruler can still give you a nice benefit:

It gives you the ability to experiment.

Not only can you experiment with spacing out your lettering in different ways, but you can also play around with different styles, flourishes, weights, etc and if you don’t like them, you can erase and start over. The pencil gives you the power. The power to create, the power to change, the power to rearrange.*

*I can’t take the credit for that last bit…Clavius from The Swan Princess 2 was my inspiration You can take a listen below .

Tip # 3 Use Guidelines

This could be one of my most important tips. If you don’t use guidelines in your lettering then your designs will suffer. Guidelines give you an idea of where you’ll place your lettering, basically it helps with your layout.

Guidelines not only ensure that you have even spacing but it also helps with giving you a cleaner, more polished piece.

If you need help with getting consistent angles throughout your lettering, use guidelines. If you need help keeping your proportion on your letters uniform, use guidelines. As you can probably guess by now, guidelines are super beneficial to not just spacing in your lettering but to your lettering overall.

If you feel intimidated by trying to create guidelines for your work then you can try simple guides that don't require too much work. I have included two examples below of simple ways you can incorporate them into your work. This first is just sectioning the paper into quarters. What this gives you is the center horizontally and vertically, which can help you space your work better.

The second gives you a 1 inch border around the whole page which creates sort of a "DO NOT ENTER" zone. This means that your lettering should be contained in the area outlined in teal. And it also includes 3 inch guidelines inside that would help create uniform lettering. You could further narrow it down by sectioning the 3 inch spaces even more or just use them the way they are.

And there you have it. My 3 tips to get stellar spacing in your lettering. I guarantee that once you start using these in your lettering you WILL see results.

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