The Master Guide to Lettering Compositions in Procreate with Stefan Kunz

[Music] hey everyone welcome the incredibly talented and lovely stefan kuhns welcome stefan thank you tom for having me such a pleasure today you're talking about a topic which is always super high whenever we ask people you know with your lettering what are you struggling with what do you want to learn more of compositions always seem to top the polls so today you're going to actually be showing us and taking us through what you've learned over those five years i still can't believe it's five years a lot of people in the chat are like you mean stefan wasn't doing compositions since birth no no no no i started lettering like by hand in 2014 early 2014 that's when i started doing it by hand and then in 2015 at the end of 2015 that's when i quit my job so that's kind of like a two year gap where i kind of like had practice before i actually moved on into full-time uh artists but even then like i didn't become a full-time artist until 2000 early 2017. um so that's kind of like when the transition happened so yeah i love that all right let's do that i think you've got a shiny there you go look at this setup everyone so now you guys can see me still on the side um so all right whenever we start with composition well the first thing that we need to start with is always a good quote that we can use so for that i have um somewhere in my saved here like i have a lot of pins on pinterest i'm gonna go through here through a what's a good quote coffee quad do you have a good quote tom if i if i pick it out like it's gonna take a long time because i'm very picky with the quotes okay i'll take it out if you want roughly how many words just like you know five to eight something like that we still got to get through that in the next 50 minutes so uh let's maybe go with stop dreaming start doing this one dreaming so dreaming starts doing so that's an easy one so i have created so i'm going to show you a simple trick how to come up with like these are my full back solutions whenever i'm in a rut or i'm not sure how to do something is i'm gonna like line it up on a center axis so i'm gonna draw this out here then i'm gonna place these like centered and i'm kind of creating these boxes around um which is helpful for me to to know kind of like how to place them so here it's going to be stopped the important words i'm going to kind of like scale them up double the size um and then start here gonna go back and then um well maybe we can invert that maybe stop is more important stop and then we have dreaming in here and now i just gotta erase some parts here and then we have start start big larger and then doing maybe we can create like a two axis like start doing to like something like that like i always try to imagine myself like how things will look and again the more practice you have the easier it will get like sketching is only a form of of visually representing what you have in your head um so the more you practice that like the drawing part the easier we'll get so whenever i have something in my mind like i don't even sketch it out anymore because i just know exactly how it looks but to visually show that it's kind of hard so right now this looks absolutely terrible stefan quick question so yeah i saw you kind of switched the hierarchical importance there of the word is it because you said the quote um in your head because i did it i kind of agreed with your original words and then it was only when i said it to myself it's like no the emphasis would be like stop dreaming start doing like yeah so did you ever like sit and just say it out loud to yourself to understand i'll play i'll play that i'll go back and forth so many times because one thing that we do is lettering artists and you you'll kind of like make it less important than it actually is but you are communicating a message so the message needs to be clear and it needs to be focused and you need to be able to read fast so i tend to tell people like i rather want to tell people um like go for something instead of being against something so start doing is is kind of more the important part that i want to focus on so start doing and and kind of like the dreaming um like kind of keep that smaller and not as important as the other two because even though like it says like stop dreaming like i want to have the focus the the punch on the start doing so that's where i want to really emphasize it um and so again this is me kind of like figuring out like sketching it out in some different ways um and in one easy way like this one is a little bit tricky to quit and you'll realize that when you go through a lot of different quotes which quotes are tricky like four words is actually trickier than just a lot of different words um and the reason why is like i have four words that i have to place and and now i can like i'd usually have this like important words layout which is kind of like the less important words on a small scale and then important words uh less important words important words and so on and go through that again that is kind of like breaking it down into like really the shapes and sizes now what i can do here is kind of like do something similar like dreaming on like i'll put that a little bit less important but i'll create this into a kind of upward slant part then create the stop um on top here i can either choose like shapes and so that's kind of where the tetris playing comes into where you can play around with different uh styles but again you you're creating spaces everywhere and so that is kind of like the trick about composition is to learn how to deal with those spaces how to be able to create symmetry and all these elements um so for example here with this um the end here this flourishing i can choose to decide like how do i can i create something similar reversed like some symmetry in that and to put that on here and then maybe use that space in between like start maybe start is build up like that so starts becomes taller and then that just also looks a little bit weird so i can kind of like erase these parts um but maybe i can just make that a little bit round and then add the doing down here um so you see there's a lot of different ways i can go right now from just the way it's it's spelled the way like the hierarchy of the words is played out i really enjoyed this one here um because like start doing and and really the focus on that and the stop dreaming is is less important in that sense are you intensely we talked about this in ian's session earlier are you intentionally giving almost personality to the words because dreaming's a bit more kind of floaty and dream like start is super bold and then doing has this inflection which kind of infers action so yes and no one thing is like how to combine different lettering styles um so the one thing that i do is usually i will break down different styles between the words itself so not necessarily having like either you have start doing in one style so the style itself um let's go back here start doing i'll put that all into script style because like it flows better like it's it's a whole part of readability and legibility so readability is can you read the word legibility is how fast can you read it um and and then of course you can add like dreaming like putting that into a cursive font makes it look more dreamy more more visually like like it reflects the word better than if i start doing dreaming into these hard crushed letters if that makes sense um and and so that's kind of like you can't play around with these elements but then also you just want to create something that's visually appealing like if i go through some other pieces that i've created um like for example this here hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard like you can see the symmetry of the words you can see a symmetry of the styles as well like it's has the round on top so it has a symmetry in all different ways um so one here and one here and and then the 3d effect combines like there are not too many styles like you will find up to three different styles and usually you won't find like these are not really considered strong's hair so mostly sans-serif styles and so i'll never really rarely will combine saris and sans-serifs in one piece of lettering because that kind of for me is playing around with different times like sans serifs are are often used um like more like they represent a style like if i use a sans serif like that um that's kind of like more older and traditional something like that while i i use sans says it's it's more new and modern and kind of like futuristic so if you mix futuristic with modern like it's kind of like doing cowboys versus aliens um like that that would make sense like it's not a great movie but it's it's a way to combine two old things like aliens are futuristic cowboys are old like combine both and cowboys have a style so kind of like this this thick thin style so you create these different styles where you create something that represents that style really well and you kind of like add that to your lettering um like always have like a backlog of really cool styles that you can use so whenever it's like somebody's saying like hey i have a birthday and my party theme is cowboys and you're like too easy um yeah i got that in the locker kind of thing exactly so it's kind of like a ingredient that you keep up um which is also something fun to do so right now because of the time i'm usually going for like all right let's go for something that i right now like i can keep on sketching out new possibilities like i can go further like saying like um start doing something more rounded uh kind of like going more of a shape like i i'll create in my mind the shape that i have here and then create like a a break in between here start dreaming then the stop somewhere here and then doing so that also would be something that could work um but again depends on the inflection point that you want kind of cool like as you create this that reminds me like oh you know what like the stop signs are kind of like that so that is taking a little bit too far in my opinion when whenever you design like you're going like oh yeah that's totally that and so i totally like i need to go this direction that is often a a problem that stops people because as soon as you're fixed on that idea you stop thinking clearly like you're so locked into a specific outcome that you're not open to to play around with the idea anymore so the reason here is to be quick and dirty in the sense that you're playing around with a lot of different ideas and sometimes i i just like to cut it short and just play around with just saying like hey you know what i'm just going to take this as is or play around with something um yeah kind of like that is the the word that i want you to play around with so right now i'm still locked into this one and i'm gonna take this into the next uh copy and paste here new layer like kind of like scale this up to where i want it and so that's where start like where it would start to finalize is i would start actually getting a different color new layer and in that new layer i'll actually get the grid builder and now start to play around with like the grids itself so the word that i know is definitely going to be fixed is the start but what i'm thinking of um is now just play around with the the guide what i can actually think of is why not change the inclination kind of like star wars type and if i'm actually correct in thinking we should have a star wars type um builder if the team could link up this is grid builder um hopefully most people are familiar if you're not is such a game changer in the lettering world everyone who owns it loves it and swears by it so um if we could switch the button over below this live stream that would be great and everyone be sure to check out you know what i what ian and i have always asked ourselves is why don't we offer the builder bundle like we know you offer a lot of bundles but we like the builder bundle is like the mix of both of those tools in one mm-hmm it's true it's true yeah we should anyways talking about star wars i was sure that ian had a star wars shape inside of it because that's ian ian will always come up with some fun little things did you know that ian is actually amazing at the gift game no like he sends the most hilarious gifts out there that you've ever seen like whenever it's a fun situation like i'll send him something and then he replies with a gif and i'm just like how did you actually even think of like writing me back from that so but that's the end ian's nice man we've got so much time and i'm so lucky like honestly couldn't have chosen any better person to able to collaborate with and yeah you guys seem to work so well together actually as a jeweler oh yeah it's uh well for me it's a dream dream team because he like he brings this um this pro like proficient professionality and that's a tongue twister um he he brings this perfection this this slow steady work into everything and and like he gets things done and and works on things but diligently like focus like he will he will put a lot more time into something than i ever would and that's why like lettering grid builder became so good like i would have probably pushed out the product that was half finished way earlier but he was like no no let's we need to get that done we need to get that sorted we need to do this and so one of the tools we actually wanted to release this year was a other builder tool and and i was just like yeah that's just great that works it's like no it doesn't really work and like yeah it does it's like uh he's right it doesn't really work yet and and we're still working on that and trying to figure it out and do it better but thanks yeah can can you drop any sneak peeks are you allowed to reveal what it is it was called a secret project for a reason no but we like i'm not even sure what like we created such a hype around it like if one thing that i'm good at and where i bring my expertise into the um into the game is to really like marketing skills and like selling a product and so on and and he really brings out the the part was like the product will be the best as it can be and just making it like being a top product and he's kind of mad science yes wow he's good at experimenting absolutely so here i'm just adding the styles so right now i'm using the letter builder and there's actually fun like people don't know that the letter builder does exist as a um as a font so instead of me like trying to type it out like this like you can just say add text and and then just type that in and just saying like stop choose the font go in here and so so you can use that with any product um like adobe or anything else now here's a my font the stephane called by the name found by ian oh yeah i need to check this phone out in more detail oh why it looks cool oh there it goes so now change to the settings hey my procreate is there there we go kind of works okay um so you know what one thing that well no i'm not gonna say it it's gonna be a secret cool tools have to to be the suspense is killing me now with with patience yeah i know it's it's one of the things i'm learning to get better at creating a lot of great suspense no i'm terrible at it what's happening with my program let's let's relaunch it cool ah let's have some fun let's get some money no actually what is your what's your go-to cocktail is it a martini gin chun like oh yeah i got a whole cabin next door have you got a go-to in a minute let me grab you well i'm throwing some confetti here just to make something hot see birthday confetti everyone stefan came prepared oh i i got the whole room full of confettis now like my whole background that you can not see it except swimming in confetti but here this is this is the amazing blind tiger handcrafted gin that i got from from a friend of mine so yeah that looks nice it looks amazing i'm gonna make it and tastes amazing like has some black tea um in it like um some scented black tea so yeah that one is fantastic one of my best friends is scottish he keeps bringing down uh jen from edinburgh they got some good gin so here i'm using one of my own creative brushes which is a paintbrush this one is just fun because you can usually get away with drawing imperfect like you don't have to focus too much on getting the line straight and perfect because it's kind of like create this water color effect and so i'm just trying to to fill that out and so create this wet marker style look and usually i will work with black and white before going into colors so here i'm just kind of following those lines and as you can see or tell i know how the letter builder like works and where i have to draw the line so like after a while you just get used to how everything looks and how it works so it makes it so much easier which is a lot of fun yeah i love letterbuilder if the team could switch that over in the button below this live stream i don't know if you heard me say on ian's live session but since becoming so exposed to letterbuilder it made me realize how intimidating a blank canvas can be because you learned to work within these guides i know but it's but it's kind of like a ruler like we've always seen like like some people say like oh it's cheating i'm like well so is using a ruler if you think about it like if you take a just a straight ruler and draw a straight line like of course that feels like cheating but it's not and so don't feel like using the letter builder um as a form of cheating like yes you could trace letters from actual fun like i could have drawn it out and i still do that sometimes but that doesn't mean like if if i can learn something from it like the more you do it the more you practice and here you're still drawing after lines like you learn how like an s is built like where you start your s from every single time and i'm still like trying to like hey you know what the challenge is to actually be able to to kind of like use those lines to your advantage and not be just restricted by them so that's i think is the hardest challenge for people like they get so addicted to the letter builder that they're like they're unable to to draw without it so it's kind of like hey you need to also try to draw without the letter builder like try to draw a letter draw a letter in a different style like i do that sometimes like i sometimes just get so so locked in that i forget like oh how do you actually draw a letter again or how do you draw a letter not in that style and so if you see my how my style is developed it's it's it's just fun to see kind of like the the settings but you can see people who have been using it and improve their work like their style has improved so much over the time and like the cool thing about it is really how much fun it is and how fast it goes like look at how fast i get to draw the word start without actually having to spend too much time on like does it really look right because i can just be really focused in here and and not spend too much time zooming out zooming in seeing like oh did i actually draw it with the same thickness and weight and and so on because i can just really um like i can do that at the end but right now i like i got the spacing mostly right i got the the letters are consistent throughout and that's one thing that is really hard in composition is to get compositions like get the style of the letters consistently throughout the piece um and so that is one challenge that is really good to play around with um it's such a time saver and um stefan i know you'll be able to testify to this but one of my favorite things when it comes to digital products is seeing what people create using them oh yeah it's so fun it's amazing just to see all the things that people have created like we have sold ian and i have tried to count that in and that's without design cuts but we have sold or we have over 30 000 customers like 26 27 000 customers for the letter like the builder bundle alone so imagine how many people are are using that and and how many like we've got some fans who just like every piece they do they use it and and like we've never i remember seeing someone on i think on creative market um who was sharing about like hey you know what i like they she created a a font that was sold over 1 million like she made 1 million with that font and i was like this is amazing how is that possible and and kind of like dreaming of dancing and and now kind of like with ian together we've kind of like created this product that is has this crazy effect that has reached so many people has helped so many people and and like ian like ian said it himself in the stream before like i use that product like it's a product that we are using ourselves and so not knowingly that it would really hit the market so well but seeing like you know what we are using it we're actually doing it just for us and so well that's the best way often and i know with ian and so many of his earlier products even came from like saving himself time or figuring out something that was annoying in his workflow and yeah yeah shout out to both of you guys um like that's incredibly impressive sales and i know on design cuts as well it's been enormously popular with our community people people love it it's like wherever you get grid and letter builder in front of letters they love it it's it's really really cool to see it's just a game-changing product yeah it's been it's always hard to then follow up on on successes like that just to create like it's not about creating just products that are successful but creating products that are are helpful and and we're like constantly trying to to figure out like hey what's what's something that people are struggling with that if we could make it easier like we'd love to help like we've got the we've got the resources to work on on projects like that and we've got the the the desire and the the skill sets often to solve these problems because sometimes when you're doing something for a very long time you don't even think about these things anymore like you're just used to it like yeah that's just the way it is and or i've created a workaround like the letter builder it was a work around that i've always been using myself and like i see a lettering artist everywhere using the grid builder like they draw grits around their lettering pieces and they spend time like drawing these lines out and over again and then like they're not even parallel and sometimes and you're like why are you not just using this tool that cost you like 30 bucks is like even if you if you make um 25 bucks an hour like you you have spent like just an hour doing that but the more pieces you create the more time you will waste by just drawing these lines over and over and and it hurts so much which is the part that i i don't know i it gets me sad like frustrated and sad just to to think about it but like i've seen so many people that are just like no no i like they block themselves in some way i'm set in my ways kind of thing yeah yeah it's like no like i don't need tools to to work and i'm like yeah like of course you don't like yes you can do it yourself yes it's totally fine if like you work um like if you do everything yourself like again like i could have created a lot of products myself but working with ian is just so much better and so that's why collaboration working with other people like you don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time like use those tools like even for me like i know that a lot of the things that you guys create on on design cuts like of course i could do it myself like i can do a lot of those presets brushes i can do it myself but it's such a time saver and and like from a business and uh point like my so one of my employees actually like asked like hey can i buy this um these presets and stuff like that i'm like of course like how how much time do you think you'll save and he's like yeah no no probably like a ton of time i'm like of course then like you've already all you have to do is work out your hourly rate exactly that's what gets me and you don't even have to charge a premium hourly rate if you're on like 25 bucks an hour and something costs 19 bucks but it's gonna save you an hour a day it's like the roi on that is enormous exactly and that's that's when you're starting getting good at calculating things which like for me coming from a banking background like you calculate those things all the time like return on investment um it's a big one that that you always need to calculate and and so you're you're trying to come up with a lot of cool like a lot of good ways to save money to not spend money in in a stupid way but really to come up with good ways so that you actually like yeah you save money in the end and don't waste anything all right well not many people know this but when we first started design cuts part of the meaning behind the name was it was cutting out the time and the extra cost and the hassle behind your design projects that's where design cuts come it comes from see that is a really good name like i didn't know that now yeah we should probably tell people that more i think it's so cool how you can like put together an impromptu composition and have a full-blown conversation i'm not that good at multitasking well i've been trying to do more live streams on youtube so if anyone hasn't checked out my youtube stuff um i usually try to to create like i've done a lot of live stream during the corona time and and so yeah when you're streaming live you want to explain something and draw at the same time like you want to be entertaining it's really hard like you got to come up and and there are sometimes when i start to struggle when i start to try to problem solve things um so like right now like i'm i'm going to that where my brain is trying to solve this um this this whole piece and i'm like trying to figure out like where can i place all these elements to make them look um visually appealing that are like probably at the center maybe i need to turn this around and and like kind of like move it around so i need to change it to freeform and turn out the magnetic on the settings here so i can move it a tiny little bit higher up and the question always remains like can you read it still really well and so having a hard time to do that so i'm thinking more of this but now the easiest way to play around with it more is actually put it on a different layer so cutting it out then using the menu here and paste yeah just paste that will put it on a different layer so now i can cut it out without actually having to move it around too much and maybe even make it smaller so one part that is not tricky here is kind of like getting the dreaming so i'll probably cut that out as well and see if i can move that um so instead of just doing copy and paste i'm just going to remove this part but using again the cut out putting that on a separate layer paste allows me now to maybe again put it in the same angle angle here as this so because the dream the g of the dreaming kind of like will will bother me at some point and i can place that maybe even make it a tiny bit smaller not too small because otherwise the shape will just look like it's just a pyramid going into the center i've seen you work several times stefan and this is all part of it right i think every time i've seen you do a composition you shift things around you play with kerning because it's never perfect like immediately no never and and like the thing is like i've read this this morning in a book like i've been starting to read again a lot more but i've been reading creative confidence um i have no idea who the author is uh but it's supposed to be like one of those creative books that you need to read and in it like it was talking about failure and how failure like needs to become more part of your um of your process and like i love that quote too like make failure part of your process um like it sounds great but again like failure never feels great um like you never want to fail so you need to kind of like create this environment where like it goes maybe in the topic of like being um uncomfortable or seeking discomfort um that's kind of like a the youtuber um the yes theory youtubers who who say that really well like hey seek discomfort um i love that quote because seeking discomfort never feels easy and so one of the things that i have tried to do more of is to uh seek discomfort by by learning that in the small things like the things that you rarely would really think of like oh is that how you learn to seek discomfort like showering cold like at the end of your shower like showering cold like you hate it every single time but you know it's good for you and it feels great after you've done it and but before it you know just like your body will kind of like shrink and and like um it will burn for the very first second in in the cold way and and so that for me every single time i do it i'm like realizing like i'm just training my body to to really react to this discomfort and just be okay with it often enough it becomes kind of addictive as well when you routinely push outside your comfort zone and good things keep happening yeah so in this case here for for the lettering part like unless i'm trying and unless i'm willing to sacrifice like be called it's called like sacrificing your darlings like if i'm okay to sacrifice what i've just created like saying like you know what like of course i can say like this is not perfect i'm always someone who's trying to say like you know what i like to finish a piece and then create something new because with every iteration uh you create more and better things and i believe in the the whole concept of quality produces like quantity produces quality better than just trying perfection and like perfection like they've tested that with with two groups where one group was had to create like once group of students had to create like one perfect piece while the other group uh only had to create uh like was measured on the amount of pieces they created this yeah this was a photography class right yeah there are two well i've heard two examples one is a photography class the other one is actually um a pot of clay like um sculpting class where they sculpted like pots of clay and they said like it's so much easier to um to to measure with clay because one thing is what you realize is like clay you can measure the quality of clay because um it has like stability structure and all these elements in it like and they could see that all these pieces created by the the group that had to create a lot of pieces and they just create a lot better pots and because they just had learned they had gone through so many different iterations that they just realized like oh you know what this doesn't work this works and this doesn't and so on and so on i bet they have more fun yeah well probably the other one like the photography class the same example is like they just tried to create one and by creating just one they never really got to to create that one perfect or that one good and at some point you're just like you can work so much longer on one piece but the the piece you create is not actually that great so rotate level 100. yeah i'm constantly like trying to to play around the reason why i play around with that is just to see like things that i rarely or normally wouldn't see so for example with this doing here um if i go to the transform tool and go to warp like advanced mesh will help me like i did that on a rotated angle that was kind of like the shape that i was using but i want to kind of like get it more to the level of the dreaming so kind of like splitting that up playing around with that and like zooming it out zooming in helps you kind of like see it in different ways that you wouldn't necessarily see without it so even here i'm thinking like the the dreaming is like still a bit off to one side and um maybe even this part here i'm not sure if this is the best ending so i'm just gonna select that again go to the free transform place it more at the center here like that's all visually like trying to find where it fits best another cool thing is with the new feature of procreate is also just like you can start coloring in um with just some some white uh let's see come back in here like giving some some tones and can i call in both no oh yeah like i've been working on on creating like these um these long format uh lettering sessions on youtube where people can just watch me draw something like i've been getting to water color a lot more lately because it's also just so much more relaxing colorful it's easy to it's fast it's incredibly fast like you're so much faster is this your youtube lives that i've seen yeah yeah really cool everyone should definitely subscribe this is looking good i have to say so the thing that i want to get to is the one that's coming soon it's a little trick that i've learned with the latest procreate x update which is really cool it took me some time to really figure it out and understand how it works because i was like gradient maps how does that work like i thought it would work differently and and i became a little obsessed with the colors and styles that it presents um but it's really cool and fun to use so here so all right so once you've kind of like finished again it's never finished but you can stop somewhere um probably like five steps or something [Music] and i'm still not finished here it's looking amazing so here no just like here so gradient maps gradient map on the layer and now you're adding this here like the blaze nice and so now you can change kind of like all right let me turn the blacks to something more orange getting here so i can change that here here these are maybe a tiny little bit [Music] can i turn that off no cannot i can play around with like these different versions here and again here i'm just gonna change the color to something a little bit different saturated dark and so again if you're not just using the two whites but in my case like this here is one example but in another example here that's kind of how it created this effect by just using like gradient maps and like putting like one on the background here so if you watch at the um let's see on the video timelapse replay you can see like i went all through it like i tried with the different colors then turned in black and white and then added like the gradient maps and suddenly going back and forth created like the whole flourishing and then added gradient maps again so there's a lot of cool things you can do the year that's super impressive i feel like you've packed so much in to about 50 minutes that honestly could have been like a two three hour session but yeah incredible thank you man thank you thank you again for joining us thank you to everyone who joined us and um stefan thank you so much we'd love to have you back in the future of course well always every year all right we'll chat you really soon see you later buddy all right guys

Channel: Design Cuts

Views: 1,546

Keywords: Graphic design podcast, Graphic design, Graphic designer, Useful information for graphic designers, tom ross, graphic design resources, graphic design success, freelance graphic artist, design cuts live conference, design cuts, design cuts live, lettering tutorial, lettering ipad procreate, lettering design, lettering in procreate, procreate lettering, lettering layouts, lettering composition, stefan kunz, stefan kunz procreate, stefan kunz letter builder

Id: kdp0VhGU7bM

Length: 42min 29sec (2549 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020