Meeting Nº 20: Brush Lettering Workshop

After much success with our brush lettering workshop back in July 2014, the Ligatures team offered its first full-day workshops this past March, hosted by Toronto letterers Christopher Rouleau and Kyle Gallant.

The participants started with the basics, learning the fundamental strokes that make up brush letterforms with our new & improved lettering course book (retail version coming soon to our shop!) There was an opportunity to try out all the different brushes that were provided: Tombow, Faber-Castell, Pentel, Copic Wide, and the Sharpie Brush. As people found their favourite tools, and got comfortable holding the pen, the construction of letterforms began.

After a thorough review of the basics, Chris and Kyle led the group into developing classic upper case letterforms with the strokes learned.

The afternoon portion of the class explored the lowercase alphabet, with short letter combinations. Both Chris and Kyle had encouraged the students to hold off on writing words until the basics were covered. Slowly but surely, they eased into word construction and the results were stunning.

We also had several exercises, including matching a style, and fictional branding exercises. The talent in the room was incredible!

At the end of the day, it was amazing to see how far everyone had come in their brush lettering. In just 7 hours, people had discovered which tool they were suited for, and began developing their personal style.

On behalf of the Ligatures team, I'd like to thank Veronica Wong and Shopify for allowing us to use their wonderful space. The open air concept and natural light couldn't have made for a better learning space. Thank you to all of those that participated in this event - it was a big step for the team and we were grateful for the warm reception. We can't wait to do it again.

If you're interested  in working with Ligatures for future workshops at your agency or office, please contact us at ligatures.yyz@gmail.com and we'll be happy to discuss options.