Designing Hand Lettering Systems: From Single Motif to Cohesive Project

Push your hand-lettering projects to the next level! Join lettering artist and illustrator Mary Kate McDevitt for this two-hour, in-depth class on creating cohesive lettering systems.

Mary Kate will take you behind-the-scenes on a real client project and share how to create a system of multiple illustrations and lettered blurbs, tied together with a single motif to create a cohesive and beautiful system you can apply to any large project.

This class is great for the illustrator or designer looking to push their work a bit further and create something big. You’ll learn to tell a larger story with your lettering and illustration using hierarchy, color, and style to unify your drawings.

Every lesson progresses in bite-sized, step-by-step demonstration. Mary Kate uses a book cover of her own design as a starting point, and then illustrates an ex libris page, a title page, and a back cover page with a hand-lettered blurb. She sketches multiple concepts for each element, and refines her drawings until she lands on final illustrations for each, creating a full lettering system for the book. Ultimately, all of the drawings are tied together with a uniting concept and aesthetic — and her careful demonstration and explanation demystifies how.

You’ll leave this class with frameworks to pinpoint what makes an illustration or lettered phrase work, and you'll learn how to unite multiple applications of your illustrations.