How I became a type designer while rocking my baby to sleep.

Written by milavisuals | Published 2017/12/24
Tech Story Tags: calligraphy | calligraphy-app | handwriting | type-design | fonts

TLDRvia the TL;DR App

When you become a new mom you hardly find any spare time. So in between the feedings, diaper changes and trying to get my daughter to sleep, I tried to figure out a way to keep making time for my creative skills.

For years I’ve been working on calligraphy (with real ink on a physical canvas). I knew that I had to pursue something digital that I could quickly pick up and pause in tiny spaces of time. So when my amazing husband gifted me the iPad Pro I plunged into the world of type design.

After researching I found calligraphr.com, where I could convert my hand drawn letters into a usable font. What I liked about this website is that you can download templates of the characters, work on the characters and upload them for conversion.

I started making my own font with the app Procreate. With the variety of brushes and settings you have all the freedom to create beautiful visualizations.

Here’s my first font. I used a flat brush and I hadn’t figured out that I could change the spacing between my letters.

….. wasn’t great, but it was a start.

Second and third font. Ok ok not bad. Getting slightly better.

This is fun. Getting the hang of it!

I also tried to use some weird brushes and I kinda like the results!

After practicing every single evening, my fonts were becoming better and I decided to place them all on my creative market store.

Working on a new font almost every evening while rocking my daughter to sleep, has helped me make babysteps forward on my type design skills.

While I just started scratching the surface of type design, tiny and consistent actions have been the single biggest contributor of progress and growth.

Micro improvements on a consistent basis (even with a very limited amount of time) will beat overthinking and dreaming of potential futures anytime.

Pick a goal.

Take a tiny action from today onward.

See what happens.

Good luck!

PS. To check out all my fonts thus far, click here.


Published by HackerNoon on 2017/12/24