How do you practise?

Mads Davidsen
Mads Davidsen Posts: 42
in Technique and Theory
I like to draw and paint. When I practise, I find reference photos to mimic still-life drawing. Every time I tell myself that I should practise (becoming a better type designer and letterer), I always get stuck as to how I should practise that. If you teach type design, what kind of exercises do you give to your students? As for the more technical aspects, I find tutorials on Glyphsapp.com and try to repeat the techniques inside the application.

—Mads
Tagged:

Comments

  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    Practice looking at the white, to take it seriously; it's the hardest thing.
  • Michael Clark
    Michael Clark Posts: 138
    "Practice looking at the white," in relation to the black!
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    Try doing the hard thing long enough that you prefer doing it to the easy thing.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited July 2017
    Michael Clark said:
    "Practice looking at the white," in relation to the black!
    Indeed, as one thing. But looking at the black is so much easier, and formally taught so much more that the white badly needs the propping up.
  • Ramiro Espinoza
    Ramiro Espinoza Posts: 839
    edited July 2017
    Hey @D. Epar ted, Why you think everybody is off topic here? 
  • Mads Davidsen
    Mads Davidsen Posts: 42
    I appreciate your input, but it wasn’t really what I was going for. I watched a video on Skillshare with Louise Fili in which she said she used to practise drawing letters from a book she had. I was wondering if that is something you do when you are studying type design—or is it all technical?
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    Practice is technical.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,216
    edited July 2017
    I once practiced calligraphy, drawing a page of curves over and over again.
    In typography, I set type in Quark XPress to imitate, in facsimile, a page of old letterpress typography.
    In digital type design, I’ve used an existing font as a benchmark, trying to make my new type match (and better) its character count and readability; for instance, my Pratt body text font was designed to match Utopia in character count and x-height—even though it is a quite different genre.
  • scannerlicker
    scannerlicker Posts: 18
    Like this: http://typerobics.scannerlicker.net/
  • Austin Stahl
    Austin Stahl Posts: 55
    scannerlicker said:
    Like this: http://typerobics.scannerlicker.net/
    I came across your Typerobics a while back and have been borrowing the idea for my own practice — but weekly, not daily. (I'm not fast enough yet!) It really is a nice way to get some familiarity with a bunch of styles, and test out lots of ideas, in a short period of time.

    Another thing I like to do to practice my vector-drawing skills is to recreate existing letterforms by eye. I think continual feedback is an important component of practice — if you can learn to see when a shape or curve is not matching your target, you can keep tweaking the point/handle placement until you can see you've got it. No better way to learn how to create a certain kind of shape or curve than to trial-and-error your way into actually doing it.
  • Mads Davidsen
    Mads Davidsen Posts: 42
    @scannerlicker
    Uh, interesting! That is a start.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • scannerlicker
    scannerlicker Posts: 18
    Austin Stahl said:
    scannerlicker said:
    Like this: http://typerobics.scannerlicker.net/
    I came across your Typerobics a while back and have been borrowing the idea for my own practice — but weekly, not daily. (I'm not fast enough yet!) It really is a nice way to get some familiarity with a bunch of styles, and test out lots of ideas, in a short period of time.
    Go for it, Austin! Let me know how it's working out for you!
  • scannerlicker
    scannerlicker Posts: 18
    Mads Davidsen said:
    @scannerlicker
    Uh, interesting! That is a start.
    Works for me! ;)
  • iamaaronmartin
    iamaaronmartin Posts: 2
    I use TypeCooker as well, using pen & paper. I'll typically stick with a single word.

Categories