The Story Behind Samantha Script: Part Two

Continued from Part One…

After I had found the lettering style I liked best, I practiced it until felt natural to me. This takes time and practice and can be quite frustrating. It feels as though you're lettering with the opposite hand! Very awkward. However, it's essential for me to get to where I can work out the style on paper with ease. It allows me to determine how to handle challenges such as letters that collide and to make sure that there is consistency among them. There always are a couple of difficult letters that I will spend hours on trying to get right – the list of culprits typically consist of the letters x, z, s and k.

After I had several sheets of letters, I scanned them in, and then in Photoshop, I set up a simple document approximately 5 inches tall by 50 inches long. I sorted through the pages of letters, selecting, copying and pasting my favorites into the master document. I ended up with 2-4 versions of each letter. I lined them all up on a baseline and made simple adjustments, such as scaling until they were all the same size, rotating and adjusting contrast if needed. The result was a long line up of letter possibilities. Once I saw it laid out all together like that, I had a much better idea of what to keep and what to toss. I whittled it down to one or two versions of each.

raw scans from lettering sheets

Next, using the brush and eraser tool, I made modifications to the letters. If this were done by hand, it would similar to using a technical marker and white correction paint. I use a tablet and stylus to do all of my work. I love tablets – I’ve been using them for almost 15 years. I don’t even think I own a mouse! Tablets allow you to have more control of tools such as the paint brush as they are pressure sensitive and the size and shape of the brush varies with how much pressure you apply.

touch up in Photoshop

After I had everything drawn up just so, I brought the drawing into FontLab (copy/paste from Photoshop). With the pen tool, and using the drawing as a template, I drew my vector outlines around the forms. This step usually surprises people when I explain how I work. They aren’t expecting Photoshop to be part of my process and they sometimes ask why I don’t just use auto-trace. I suppose it’s because I’m very hands on – I like the process of adjusting letters in this way. I feel as though I have a closer connection and intimacy with the forms, and when it comes to drawing outlines, I much prefer to draw the path outright myself. I feel I have more control this way and can make decisions and adjustments as I go.

redrawn in FontLab

In a relatively short period of time, I had the basic character set drawn up and assembled in FontLab. When I set a few sentences, it actually turned out fairly decent looking – which is rarely the case. It’s more common that I shriek in horror when I see the first draw through and have to go back to the table and make major changes, sometimes starting over completely. But this time, I got lucky.

Now, I’d like to add a side note about where the big divide exists between lettering and type design. Lettering is essentially immutable – the word or phrase exists in one combination of letters, and as a lettering artist, you may embellish as you wish, designing the letters around each other, getting the design to work together in one cohesive unit. You have a certain amount of freedom that doesn’t exist with type design. If you were to separate all of those letters out and rearrange them, the design would fall apart. With typeface design, this can be amended somewhat by incorporating swash letters or alternate forms, but even so, it still won’t have the same qualities as an individual, custom piece of lettering. In typeface design, the letters have to be more generic, simplified and consistent (unless you want a completely chaotic looking typeface). Letters need to work together in any combination, and it takes a lot of adjustments to get it there. You have to consider the letters in ever changing groups, not individually. This is also the point where, if a natural, hand-lettered looking typeface is desired, decisions have to be made about allowing some variance to occur within the letters to give them personality without it being overly distracting and causing collisions.

As I continued, the first major challenge I encountered was getting the uppercase letters to work with the lowercase. The uppercase set I had designed at first was a bit much. I took some print outs with me to show my graphic design friends when we met up for dinner and drinks one night. They all emphatically agreed that they were too fancy for the more casual looking lowercase, and as I drove home, I was grateful for the confirmation of my suspicions, but knew that I had to create an entire new uppercase set to pair up with the lowercase letters I currently had. It took time and experimentation to get a new set designed, but once I had it finished, I was glad I had changed it. I kept the original set for use when other swash letters were employed and used it as the default for Samantha Italic, were it was better suited.

The next challenge was what to do about swash letters. I knew I wanted to create a set, but I was concerned about how to style them for an upright design. I was drawing a blank! I sat down and drew several sketches, wracking my brain for ideas as I trudged through it. The struggle resulted in the unexpected – more swashes and alternates that I originally thought was possible. I think if the ideas had come easily to me, there wouldn’t be nearly as many choices as there are now. I had to push myself through this mental block and in doing so, I ended up making Samantha Script into my largest family yet. I wanted there to be something for nearly every design situation. I concentrated on creating a range of styles from simple to complex along with other factors, such as length of the ascenders and descenders. I ended up with over 1100 alternates and swashes. I have to admit, when it got that far, I sat back and wondered if I was losing my mind. What was I thinking? It was a lot to manage, and perhaps I had done too much? Perhaps. But I thought back to when I was a graphic designer, and how I loved having a myriad of choices with the typefaces I owned. I wanted as much as was offered. I may not use them all, but you never know which ones you’ll use. And, the larger the selection, the more you have to choose from and you have a higher probability of finding exactly what works for you.

Next… the story behind creating the catchwords that complement Samantha Script.