As part of #the100dayproject I’ve spent the last 100 days handlettering one word every day. I’ve been sharing them on Twitter and Instagram, but if you don’t follow me there I’ll give you the overview in this blog post and explain how I went about it.
What got me started was a post on Facebook by My Modern Met. The article it linked to (I believe it was this one) told me about the project, where it came from and gave lots of inspiring examples. What was even better is that I spotted this article in March, with the next #the100dayproject starting on 2 April 2019. So I signed up for the newsletter and started preparing.
For my #the100dayproject I decided to practice my handlettering skills. I’ve been doing a lot with sketchnotes recently, but handlettering and calligraphy have been major creative interests for ages. I’ve just never practiced a lot, and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to do so. As I needed something that I could draw quickly and wouldn’t take much preparation or thinking I went for handlettering one word a day. With a little help from my friend Google I found this list of the 100 most beautiful words in English (there are more than 100 on there, by the way). You may or may not agree with the selection of words, but it provided me with something set to draw each day.
Knowing what to draw is one thing, deciding how to draw it is a whole other ball game. So I consulted a few handlettering resources. The book that got it all started for me is ‘Handlettering doe je zo‘ (Dutch) by Karin Luttenberg/Paperfuel. I recieved it as a gift a few years back from my stepsister. Last summer I treated myself to the ‘Deltas Creatief werkschrift – Handlettering‘ (Dutch) which has lots of practice pages to try out handlettering different alphabets. During a recent visit to Waterstones I picked up ‘Revival Type: Digital typefaces inspired by the past’ by Paul Shaw. This book gives you both examples and a bit of history behind the different fonts. Last but definitely not least I used Pinterest with typography images in abundance.
What I tried to do was research different fonts when I had some time and draw them in my notebook with a pencil. Then on a daily basis I turned one draft version in pencil into a final one with my Stabilo GREENpoint pen or, if I really needed the lines to be very thin, with one of my uni PIN fine liners. If there were larger surfaces to fill in I either used my black ABT Dual brush pen by Tombow or my black Ecoline 700 Brush Pen.
But enough about all the prep, let’s show you what it it turned out to be:
Days 1 – 10:
Days 11 – 20:
Days 21 – 30:
Days 31 – 40:
Days 41 – 50:
Days 51 – 60:
Days 61 – 70:
Days 71 – 80:
Days 81 – 90:
Days 91 – 100:
It’s weird knowing that (as I’m writing this) today was the last day and I won’t ‘have to’ make another one tomorrow. Because as much fun as it was there have definitely been a fair few days where I ‘had to’ make myself do it, which makes me glad I picked something fairly straightforward. But that is also the beauty of it – that I did do it every day. I only missed a day once – and that was because we unexpectedly came home after midnight and I still hadn’t done my drawing for the day. But other than that it’s been great to do something so simple yet creative every day for more than 3 months in a row. I will miss it a bit but I’m also looking forward to doing some other creative things, so stay tuned for those!
And in any case, there is always #the100dayproject2020, right?!
Have you ever taken part in a creative project or challenge like #the100dayproject? How has your experience been?
Annelies Explores 