My Struggle with Consistency
Can I be real with you right now? It's been a real struggle for me these last few weeks on making time to make posts for my blog and to be sure that anyone who is reading this is getting any type of insight and value from it. I've slowly but surely stopped waking up at my early time of 4:45 am to write before my early exercise routine. I was on a roll when I first started back in October and when February hit, things began to go down hill. The temperature dropped, and it became much more difficult to get up in the mornings and clean snow before heading to work. I had to listen to some inspiration earlier today just to re-evaluate my whole reasoning behind doing this. I know that the things we enjoy doing we make sacrifices for. We may make sacrifices in our relationships, our health, our sanity even, and our career development. The list can go on and on and the cause and reasoning differs from one person to the next. I find myself constantly going back to defining what my, "why," is and whether it is solid enough of a foundation to build upon. I wonder, "is this really what I want to be doing right now?"..or whether or not someone out there in the World Wide "Webiverse" is even reading my words. I often go back to the question of am I providing value to those of you who are reading and where I can improve. As an artist and designer I tend to be very hard on myself and reflect, critique and analyze myself much more harshly than those on the outside. With that I came up with some questions with the help of a friend that I will be answering mainly for myself. Perhaps sharing these questions with you will help you in discovering ways to be more consistent.
These are questions I asked myself today:
Are you setting the right goals?
Are you focusing on what matters?
What goals can I break down into smaller, manageable tasks?
What am I willing to sacrifice in order to make time for, the things that matter to me right now?
What will bring the biggest change in the long game of life?
Overall, I've learned that life goes on, it owes you nothing and you should keep pushing through even through your down moments. That feeling of being down is temporary and it shouldn’t break you. If it does, take the time to pull yourself together and get back on your feet.
Want to share your responses with me? Send me an email by clicking the link.
The Primary Basics: Typography and Hand Lettering
I must admit that I was not ready for todays blog post. I wanted to write about the anatomy of type, have a full page illustration on it, my own diagram - it all sounded great in my head, until I began to put my pencil to paper. All that I wanted to share with you, can not be executed in the time I allotted myself. Instead, I have decided to share with you the very basics and I have a free gift for you that can be downloaded for your use as you get started in your journey to hand lettering. I am showing up today, to give you the very primary basics before we even enter the anatomy of type. We can call this the primary basics to typography and hand-lettering.
Before I start let me share a story with you:
Remember when we were in elementary school, learning how to write? We were given these really large lined papers, and sometimes the paper had dotted lines that created our alphabets. We were supposed to trace those lines and report back to the teacher and show our squiggly had writing skills. Tracing those dotted lines allowed us to build muscle memory while practicing our hand writing. Over time we learned to create words, phrases and so fourth.
Todays we are covering the base lines that are encountered when practicing hand lettering. You can think of these lines as guides, and while I am providing a template for you, feel free to learn how to create your own so that you are not limited by tools.
Here's are some questions to think of:
Do you know what your letters sit on? A base Line. Do You know what the X-Height is? The Cap Height? Is the Ascender above or below the CapHeight? Where does the descender fit in all of this?
While our elementary lined paper kept it basic with three lines, one of them being dotted lines, we are covering six lines.
Ascender: An upward vertical stroke found on the part of lowercase letters that extends above the typeface’s x-height.
Cap Height: A line marking the height of uppercase letters within a font.
x-Height: The height of lowercase letters reach based on height of lowercase x; does not include ascenders or descenders.
Mean Line: Imaginary line running along the top of non-ascending, lowercase letters. The mean-line falls at the top of many lowercase letters such as “e,” “g” and “y
Base Line: The invisible line where all characters sit.
Descender: The invisible line marking the lowest point of the descenders within a font.
That's it for our lesson today! Download the free page template so you can get started on practicing your lettering.
Have more questions? Subscribe and send your questions to me about the anatomy of type. I look forward to hearing from you.
Change: noun - the act or instance of making or becoming different.
Change defined as a noun is the act or instance of making, or becoming different. Change is difficult - but none the less it is very much necessary, especially to see growth. Here on the blog look to see changes that will be happening very soon. Think about what happens when you here, "there are going to be some new changes around here," usually in a work place people get nervous or fearful that they are going to loose their job. Change doesn't always have to be associated with negative thoughts. The changes here are positive and will encourage my growth in hand-lettering. Here are some things to expect:
New Blog Post days: will be every Wednesday, beginning March 4th, 2015.
I want to deliver more value to you as I chronicle my journey, so you can expect to see my daily word post over on instagram.
I want you to share what I am learning as I chronicle my journey, you can expect shared tips and resources on how to get better with your hand-lettering journey.
While this is a very shortened post, I am eager to see where things go from here.
What are you struggling with on your hand-lettering journey? Share below in the comments section.