- Hello everyone, it's Amanda.
Welcome back to my channel.
Today I am so pumped because we are bringing back
one of my favorite series.
I mean, it never really was an official series,
but I did a couple videos a while back.
I did one where I did 50-plus
different bullet journal doodle ideas.
I did different banner and header ideas.
And today we are gonna be doing 50-plus
different lettering enhancement ideas.
I know.
I'm super excited.
I love lettering.
I know you guys love hand lettering as well.
Some of you might be wondering
what even are lettering enhancements.
By lettering enhancements I mean stuff
that you can add on to standard lettering
or fonts just to kinda jazz it up,
pack more of a punch, add more of an impact,
and it's not so much, like, lettering styles,
although I guess it kind of is,
but it's just stuff that are universally
(laughs) words, it's little tricks
that are universally applicable to most styles of font,
whether it's cursive, San Serif, bold font,
capital fonts, you name it.
The combinations are endless.
So hopefully this video gives you some sort of inspiration.
Before we get into all the lettering fun,
I'd like to thank today's sponsor Skillshare.
Skillshare is super awesome
and I'm gonna be talking a bit more
about why they're such a great resource to have
a bit later in the video.
But without further ado,
I'm sure you guys are super eager to get started
so let's get right into it.
Of course, we're starting off with my favorite category,
the drop shadows.
You guys know I'm a big fan of the drop shadow.
I add these onto everything.
They're just an easy way to bump up your lettering style,
whether it's for cursive or capital letters.
This first one is what I like to call
the floating drop shadow.
As you can see, I just did a thin line
on the right side of the letters
and it's not attached to the letters.
Number two is a more traditional drop shadow.
So it's like a thick black outline,
but it's all attached to the main letters
and it looks like it's just hovering
off of the page a little bit.
The next drop shadow is kind of like a hollow drop shadow.
It's very similar to the floating one
except this one it's actually attached
to the main lettering.
If you picture a white, hollow version
of whatever letters you're doing
and then move it a bit down and to the right,
that's what that looks like to me.
Number four takes me back to my childhood.
It reminds me of when I used to do block lettering as a kid.
So you start off with whatever lettering you start off with
and then on every corner you draw these little ticks
all in the same direction
and then once you draw lines connecting all of those ticks
you can see it ends up looking
like these letters are blocks.
I did a couple different versions of these,
so this one you can see I did the exact same thing,
drew the ticks, and then connected them all
except this time I actually filled in those empty bits
with some hatching.
I followed the diagonal lines
so they're all in the same direction
and it gives it more of a graphic look.
I did a pretty similar thing for number seven
with the hatching and everything,
except this time it actually didn't have
the black outline around the shadow.
It gives it a bit more of an airy feel
and still graphic, but just a little different.
So for number eight you're gonna start off
with the same floating drop shadow as number one,
except this time we're just going to repeat it
a couple times and this gives it more of a 3D look
and the repeated lines are kind of cool
and act as a little emphasis on the letter.
(pleasant music)
Number nine is pretty easy and self-explanatory.
It's the floating drop shadow except the lines are dotted.
Gives it more of a dainty, airy feel to the lettering.
(pleasant music)
Number 10 is very similar to the block lettering
except this time you're going to pick a point
at the top and then connect all of the corners
of the letters to that point.
I roughly sketched this in with pencil first
before I used my fine liner
and once you ink it all in
it makes it look like you're staring
directly at these block letters
and they're going far back into the perspective
of that point.
(pleasant music)
If you want to play around with something
more graphic and bold,
you can do the same type of block lettering
except extend it out really, really long
and then fill it in black so that the shadow
kind of makes up the outline of the lettering.
You can erase the pencil lines for the lettering
and it ends up looking really, really dramatic (laughs).
(pleasant music)
Okay, so now we're into the section
that I like to call the inner line.
It's pretty self-explanatory as well.
You just draw a line on the inside.
I used white for this one on top of a color,
but you can do white on black or you can also,
like I'm showing you here,
use black in line for hollow lettering.
Number 14 I'm also drawing lines on the inside
of the lettering except I'm doing it all on the top corners
of letters so that it looks like highlights.
It makes it look like bubble letters.
Moving onto the next category which is the opposite
of the inner line.
We are doing an outer outline (laughs).
I'm writing whatever word and then I'm just creating
a little bubble outline all around it.
You can do the same thing
but then repeat it a couple times
so that it's more fun and funky.
Or you can do the outer outline
and then add a drop shadow to it if you want
to get a little crazy.
You know, start mixing and matching things.
That's another thing with all these lettering styles.
You can mix and match a bunch of them
and come up with cool combinations.
You'll see that I'm actually gonna show you guys
a bunch of the combinations.
So I outlined the letters
and then played around with various drop shadows
and it gives it a different look
than if you were to only do a drop shadow.
It makes it stand out a little bit more
and, I don't know, it's fun to play around
and see the difference between the letters,
how one line can make such a huge difference.
Number 20 is the hollow drop shadow
with the outline.
Number 21 is the hatched drop shadow
and then number 22 is the block letter drop shadow.
But since I outlined the marker shape,
it ended up looking a bit more jello-like,
not really block-like, which I actually kinda
like the look of as well.
(pleasant music)
You can also flip it around
and do the outline with the lighter color,
so outside of your black outline.
By the way, this blue color just supposed to represent
a lighter marker.
All of these lettering styles use black,
white, or some sort of color.
For number 24 I'm doing an outline of the letters
except it's a little offset,
so it's a bit lower and to the left.
25 is a dashed outline which makes it look
like it's a stitched on patch.
Then similarly, number 26 is a dotted outline,
but I actually played around with putting the dots closer
to the actual lettering.
(pleasant music)
This next one is really fun.
I like to call it the confetti lettering.
You're gonna start off
by doing some sort of hollow lettering,
whether that's cursive or capital letters,
and then around the outlines of the letters
you're just going to put a bunch of dots.
It's kind of like pointillism
and you're going to spread the dots out
so that they burst outwards from the letters
and it makes it look really cool.
We've made it to about the midway mark of the 50
so I thought I would take this time
to talk a little bit about Skillshare.
If you guys don't know what Skillshare is,
they're an online learning community
with thousands of classes in design,
business, technology, photography, illustration.
You name it, they have a class for it.
It's perfect for this video
because they actually do have a ton of classes
on lettering as well.
It's actually where I learned a bunch
about lettering and calligraphy.
So if you're interested in finding more content
that's similar to mine,
then Skillshare's definitely the place for you.
Premium membership gives you unlimited access
to all the high-quality classes
so you can improve your skills
or learn something new,
and the best part is that Skillshare's actually
one of the more affordable learning platforms out there.
An annual membership costs less than $10 a month.
That's like the cost of two coffees
which is crazy because you're basically getting knowledge
and education for the cost of two coffees.
So definitely be sure to check out Skillshare for yourself.
If you click the link in my description box below
you can get a free two-month trial.
All right, so hopping back into number 28
we are going back to the inner lines.
This one is a dashed line.
I just forgot to do it in the inner lines section
but I thought I would throw it in anyways
because this also makes it look
like it's kind of stitched in.
Actually it looks kind of like a road,
like a street, with the lines that are marked on the street
but that's just 'cause I chose to do black and white.
Number 29 is pretty similar.
It's a dotted inner line
except I only put the dots on the thicker portions
of the letters which tend to be the down strokes.
For number 30 I did larger inner dots
and then I also added a drop shadow
to make it look almost like a marquee letter.
I think that's what it's called.
For number 31 I did a mix of both the dashed lines
and the dotted on the thicker portions
and it adds a little bit of an extra flourish.
Kind of looks a little elegant, in my opinion.
These next two are pretty simple.
It's to fake having a brush pen
if you don't have a brush pen.
You just add an extra line on all of the down strokes
and this works even if you're not doing cursive lettering
as I'm showing you here.
You can fill it in or leave it hollow.
Whatever you want.
The next couple of ideas that I'm showing you
are in the pattern category.
So if you want to fill in some lettering
with some cool patterns,
you can pretty much fill it in with any pattern you want.
But the ones that I'm showing you are diagonal,
hatched, lined, you can also do polka dots,
stars, hearts, whatever your heart desires.
(pleasant music)
For number 36 I did horizontal stripes
except I didn't go right to the edge of the letters,
so it gives it kind of a cool look.
For 37 I went in with my white pen
and did horizontal stripes as well
except I made the stripes
get in closer and closer together towards the bottom
so it made it look like it was faded out.
This next one uses stripes as well
except the stripes are going in the direction
of each stroke of the letters.
So as you can see, whenever there's a vertical line
I'm doing multiple vertical lines
and whenever there's a horizontal line
I'm doing multiple horizontal lines as well.
For number 39 I'm adding serifs to the letters.
So serifs are those little ticks
that you see me adding on the ends of the letters.
Wherever you see the end of a line,
that's where I add a little tick.
I don't know what else to call them.
And then for number 40 I'm filling
in some hollow letters halfway
to give it a half full appearance.
I'm doing a white inline
but then at the bottom of the inline
I'm actually going over it with the black
and kind of disintegrating some dots upwards
so it looks like the inner line is fading upward.
42, I'm using a darker marker on top of the lighter marker
and these both are kind of like the ombre section.
(pleasant music)
This similar to the confetti one we did earlier
except this time the confetti is only going towards
one direction, so in my case I'm going diagonally downwards.
And it makes it look like a pointillism drop shadow almost.
These next two are what I like to call emphasis lines.
So the first one I'm following the curves of the letters
and throwing in a couple of these dashes
and it make sit look like the letters are moving.
I also like to do this one
where there's, like, sun ray bursts
from the corners of the letters.
I think it's really cute as well.
Honestly, number 46 I really don't like.
At this point I was kind of running out of ideas,
but you can add little curly cues onto your letters.
Did not turn out as well as I thought
but just an idea.
Number 48 is another version of ombre
except this time the ombre is actually vertical lines.
So I'm filling in the bottom solid
and I'm doing a bunch of vertical lines
and layering that so that it looks like it's fading
into the darkness.
Number 49 is the second last one
and I'm adding white lines wherever there's an overlap,
this way it looks like actually 3D
and the strokes of the letters
are going on top of each other.
And then finally, number 50 is the last one.
This one's really hard to describe,
but kind of made the letters look like ribbons.
So you'll see that I added extra lines
and then wherever those extra lines are
I added shading as well
so that it looks like the ribbon
is going on top of each other
and it looks more 3D.
(pleasant music)
All right, everyone.
50 different lettering enhancement ideas.
I can't believe we made it.
It was definitely a lot
but hopefully this helped you out in some way,
gave you some inspiration,
especially for when you're feeling
a little creatively blocked.
If you enjoyed this video,
be sure to hit that bell button
and turn on notifications.
You can also see some more art
and lettering and calligraphy content
from me over on my Instagram @amandarachdoodles
but anyways, I'm going to sign off now.
Keep doodling and I will talk to you
in the next video.
Bye, everyone.
(pleasant music)