I’ve been getting more client requests for custom hand-lettering in brand projects and I want to nail the process. Currently my results feel stiff. What’s your workflow from sketch to final vector?
The stiffness problem almost always comes from vectorizing too early. The biggest mistake I see designers make is drawing a few pencil strokes on paper, scanning them, and immediately jumping into Illustrator to trace. That kills all the natural energy and flow of the letterforms.
My process starts with volume. I’ll draw the same word or phrase twenty to thirty times on paper before I even think about scanning. Each iteration gets looser and more confident. The early attempts are always stiff because your hand is trying to be precise instead of expressive. By the twentieth version, your muscle memory takes over and the strokes have actual life to them.
Once I have a sketch I’m happy with, I photograph it with my phone rather than scanning. The slight perspective distortion and lighting variation actually helps because it forces you to redraw the forms in your vector tool rather than just auto-tracing them. Auto-trace is the enemy of good hand-lettering.
In Illustrator or Affinity Designer, I redraw each letter with the pen tool, using the sketch as an underlay. This is where most of the design decisions happen. I’m not copying the sketch exactly, I’m interpreting it. Adjusting weight distribution, fixing awkward connections between letters, and finding consistent rhythms across the whole piece. This redrawing phase is where craft lives.
What @RushMoment said about volume on paper is everything. I’d add that the tool you draw with matters more than people think. A Micron pen gives you very different energy than a brush pen, which gives you different energy than a flat-tip calligraphy marker. Each tool has natural tendencies in how it creates thick and thin variation, and choosing the right tool for the style you’re after saves you from fighting the letterforms later.
For the digital phase, I actually prefer working in Procreate on iPad before going to vector. The Apple Pencil gives you pressure sensitivity that translates the brush pen feeling better than a mouse or even a Wacom tablet for initial digital refinement. I’ll clean up the lettering in Procreate, get the forms exactly where I want them, and then bring that refined version into Illustrator for the final vector pass.
Since hand-lettering is a core part of my logo work, I’ll walk through my full production process that gets consistent results for client projects.
Phase one is research and sketching. Before I draw anything, I study reference lettering that matches the mood the client needs. I keep folders organized by style: script, serif, sans, decorative, blackletter. Understanding the structural rules of the style you’re working in prevents that “designed by someone who doesn’t know lettering” look that clients can feel even if they can’t articulate it.
Phase two is rough sketching. Like @RushMoment said, volume is key. I use cheap marker paper and brush pens, usually Tombow Fudenosuke for finer work and Pentel Touch for bolder styles. I draw fast and loose, filling pages. I’m looking for happy accidents, a connection between two letters that flows unexpectedly well, a stroke that has just the right amount of bounce.
Phase three is a refined pencil sketch. I take the best elements from my rough sketches and combine them into one clean pencil drawing on tracing paper. This is where I establish consistent baseline, cap height, and x-height. I also work out the spacing between letters here because spacing problems are exponentially harder to fix in vector.
Phase four is digitizing. I photograph the refined sketch and bring it into Illustrator at about 30% opacity as an underlay. Then I redraw every stroke with the pen tool, using as few anchor points as possible. Fewer points means smoother curves. A typical letter should have somewhere between 8 and 20 anchor points depending on complexity. If you’re above that, you’re overcomplicating it.
Phase five is refinement. This is where I obsess over details. Consistent stroke terminals, balanced thick-thin transitions, optical spacing adjustments. I’ll flip the lettering horizontally and upside down to check for inconsistencies that my eye has gotten blind to. @zara.phantom’s point about Procreate is valid for the sketching phase, but for production lettering I find vector gives you the control needed for print reproduction at any scale.
The whole process from sketching to final vector takes me two to four days for a typical brand lettering piece. Rushing it is how you end up with stiff results.
quick tip that made a huge difference for me: when you’re drawing on the iPad or tablet, zoom out. Most people work zoomed in tight and it makes your strokes tight and cautious. Zoom out to where the whole word fits on screen and draw with your arm, not your wrist. The looseness comes from bigger movements.
Great process breakdown here. One thing I’d add from the branding side is that when you’re doing hand-lettering for a client’s brand identity, you need to think about how it will function as a system, not just as a standalone piece. Can it be reproduced consistently? Does it work in one color? Does it scale down to a favicon without losing its character?
These functional requirements should inform your lettering style from the start. Super detailed scripts with lots of flourishes look beautiful on packaging but fall apart at small sizes. Simpler letterforms with distinctive details in just one or two letters often work better as brand marks because they maintain their personality across applications. It’s the kind of thing @w.moses.flint.54 clearly accounts for in his process, and it’s what separates decorative lettering from brand lettering.