#the100dayproject 2020

‘Explore a single idea every day for about three months’. The #100dayproject does exactly that and it’s a great way to jumpstart your creativity. It was my second time joining the challenge but this year I went in slightly more ambitious than last.

Last year

I found out about #the100dayproject not long before it kicked off last year in April and eagerly joined in. I decided to draw one word every day in lots of different styles to practice my handlettering skills. I found a list of 100 words, grabbed a notebook and some pens and set off on this creative adventure. It wasn’t easy to stick to but I’m very proud I completed it – you can read all about it and see the drawings in this blog post.

I fondly still look back at all these words but in the long term that exercise wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be. I might look at a word and really like the style in which I drew it. But if I want to replicate it I don’t know how the other letters are drawn. So I still need to look it up (if I can find it).

This year

So that gave me the idea for this year’s #the100dayproject: to draw an entire alphabet each day. That way I create my own repository of fonts and styles and I can actually turn it into a convenient personal resource.

Luckily this year I knew about the project a lot longer beforehand and had more time to prepare. I went through the different books I have about handlettering and typography and used them to draw up a list of alphabets. Once I made it through those I turned to Pinterest and gathered a nice collection of fonts to draw.

I had a A5 notebook lying around. It’s supposed to be a bullet journal but I didn’t feel ready to start using it as such. So I enthusiastically started drawing in it until I realised that all 100 alphabets wouldn’t fit! Only about 80 would, so I needed a new notebook. In the middle of a pandemic it wasn’t very easy to get to a shop to check out notebooks, but luckily restrictions gradually lifted and I made it to Hema (where I got both notebooks from).

With it being the second time round I wasn’t as strict as last year. I knew I could stick to it for a 100 days straight (last year I only missed one day and caught up on the next). So a few times I left it until the next morning if I really needed sleep or was busy with other things. It also took longer every day to draw in comparison to last year. However, if I didn’t have much time I would switch it up a little and pick an easier font for that day. I found the daily drawing quite calming and I’m pleasantly surprised at how some of them turned out. It will be weird not doing it every single day anymore, but I’ll just have to make sure I find a new project that requires regular drawing.