Hand Lettering: Fonts of the Gods

Like anyone with a thirsty eye, I have a gnawing hunger for computer fonts. They don't come up too much in my pictures, with a few exceptions, but I use 'em for the flyers for shows and such. I have a liberal-arts-college-level training in graphic design, and I'm old enough to have done some pre-Macintosh pasteup. ("Does anyone remember waxers?")

But I'm not old or man enough to have lettered headlines by hand with only ink, my pen nibs and brushes, and balls of steel. The type I really really love, the packaging and poster designs from the 30s-50s, is either wood type (more on that letter) or hand-lettered. Every good movie poster ever was hand-lettered, even the ones for terrible movies.

I have a couple of "how to use Speedball pens and/or brushes to make nice showcard lettering" books. (The Speedball Textbook for Pen and Brush Lettering is on Amazon used for $2.73! Go grab a copy.)

The tutorials in them look a lot like this:


This, this is the stuff. I got the above picture from theletterheads.com, a fine, fine resource for hand-letterers, sign painters, and the nerds like me who love them.

For the cowardly (again, like me) who probably will not be learning hand-lettering soon, there are resources like letterheadfonts.com:



They, generously, even offer a few excellent free fonts, at letterheadfonts.com/downloads/index.shtml.


LHF Mike's Block, above, is my favorite of these.

Want to live vicariously? Check out this QuickTime Speedball Workshop Video, courtesy of LettError.com, and get schooled.

We are not worthy.