Practice like a Pro

Most people, when they’re just starting out, find it hard to prioritise practice. Creating detailed lettering pieces can be fun, but time-consuming, and there are often “more important” things which take up the majority of our time.

It can also be disheartening when you’re starting out that the work you’re creating just isn’t at the standard you hope for and so it’s easier to just stop rather than push through the boring lettering drills and time-consuming practice.

“A year from now, you will wish you had started today”—Karen Lamb

One of the great things about the Typism community is we have a wealth of lettering professionals who are only too happy to share their experiences and knowledge with those who are just starting out.

We asked twenty-one lettering artists the four questions that we most often get asked about your lettering practice struggles.

Those questions were:

1. How do you prioritise/make time for lettering practice or personal work?
2. Do you do any warm-up exercises or planning before your lettering practice?
3. How do you decide what to write? and
4. How do you improve your skills?

We compiled the answers for you into this handy blog post but we have also created a free practice like a pro roadmap which takes you step-by-step through setting up your own rockstar lettering practice routine and get it done in just 20-minutes a day. You can download the free worksheet here.

There are three main steps to remember when you are setting up your routine: prioritise your practice; preparation is the key; and plan and execute like a pro

It’s easy to run out of energy and go stale with your lettering practice once the original excitement and motivation dries up. Thinking of something inspiring to write everyday or pushing through a skill plateau can take energy that is hard to find, but if you want to be a professional lettering artist one day, you have to practice lettering like a pro now.

Following these simple steps will help you develop a daily routine and practice lettering like a pro

STEP ONE: Decide why practice is important to you

This might seem like a weird way to start, but get clear on why you want to improve your lettering skills?

Is it so that you can go pro one day? Is it so you can be as good as “so-and-so”? Is it so you can get into the Typism book? Is it so you can impress your friends every birthday and Christmas with amazing cards and envelopes?

Get clear on your reasons for wanting to practice and improve your lettering because one day, your motivation will run dry and without a bigger reason to keep practicing, you won't.

STEP TWO: Put it on your schedule

Put your daily practice session on the same calendar as you put doctors appointments and paid work meetings. By scheduling it in advance, it reminds you to show up to practice every day and it means you won’t schedule anything else that clashes with it.

Put half an hour on the calendar but don’t schedule anything else after so that if practice is going well, you can keep practicing.

STEP THREE: Treat it like physical exercise

You already know physical exercise is cumulative. You don’t expect instant results from your daily sit-ups and walks, so don’t expect an immediate improvement in your lettering every day either. You will get results over time if you keep at it and so the best way to measure progress is over time and against yourself.

STEP FOUR: Carry a sketchbook everywhere

Sometimes your day gets too busy for a scheduled practice session, or you come home from work tired at night. The best way round this is to practice in those little pockets of time which are gifted to you throughout the day. It might be the 20-minutes in the car waiting to pick-up the kids, it might be waiting for your spouse at the gym or hairdressers.

If you always keep a sketchbook and pencil on you, you can draw type in the wild during these time gifts. This is a great way to pick up new styles along the way because lettering is lurking in often the most unexpected of places.

STEP FIVE: Keep notes on your phone

One of the biggest complaints we hear at Typism is that people don’t know what to write. There are only so many times you can letter “hustle hard” or “creativity takes courage” without going crazy.

If you have a smartphone, chances are you carry it with you most of the time. Open up a notes app and start a running list of quotes and sayings you hear (or overhear). If you tune your ear during conversations on the radio, TV, or in-person, you can often get ideas of phrases, words or sayings.

Every time you hear something cool or interesting or that resonates with you, jot it down on your notes app. Then when you’re stuck for something to practice, bring out the notes and find something you like.

STEP SIX: Have your tools ready to go

One of the biggest obstacles to practice is having everything packed away. If your pens and pencils are not lying there, ready for you to pick up at a moment’s notice, you are much less likely to practice every day. If your living area is small, store them on a trolley that can be wheeled around or keep them in a pencil roll so you can lay them out quickly.

Let go of the idea that every practice session has to involve calligraphy nibs and 24 different inks and sheets of perfect A1 watercolour paper. Sometimes the best way to practice is with pencil and copy paper whilst you watch Netflix with the kids.

STEP SEVEN: Plan your projects in advance

Something that often blocks people, especially when you’re tired and out of ideas, is showing up to practice with nothing planned in advance. This is why passion projects are great, you can set your own brief and timeline and you know what needs to be done each time to move the project forward.

Signing up for challenges such as 36 days lettering can also be a great project idea because you have to think less about what you’re doing each day.

Even if you don’t want to get all fancy with a passion project, just plan out your week in advance. Mondays might always be lowercase letters, Tuesday uppercase, Thursday script letters, Saturday lockups and so on.

STEP EIGHT: Build in time for warmups

Before you exercise, you know it’s a good idea to stretch before you run, or warm up before you lift weights. It resets the routine and warms up your muscles so they don’t get hurt or torn.

Lettering muscles work in exactly the same way. By establishing a five minute warm up routine, you warm up your hand and arm muscles, settle your mind, reset your practice session and trains your body to get the most out of your practice session. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just draw rows of circles, spirals, flourishes, straight lines, cross hatching and so on, or create thumbnail ideas of the project you are going to work on.

STEP NINE: Seek and implement feedback

There is a myth started by Malcolm Gladwell called the “10,000 hour rule” where he mistakenly says that mastery is achieved after 10,000 hours of practice.

However, what he failed to synthesise from the research he cited at the time, is that it’s the kind of practice that matters, not the length of time spent practicing. If you play piano or golf for 10,000 hours but you have no coach to give you real-time feedback, by practicing repeatedly for months, you may well reinforce an incorrect technique which is impossible to correct later.

Coaching and feedback is essential for improvement to take place. Where possible, take in-person workshops so that someone can look over your shoulder and give regal-time feedback, but failing that, publish or share your work and ask for feedback from people you admire.

So that's it for the steps. How great would it be to know that a year from now your lettering was good enough for publication because you kept at it? Imagine standing at your letterbox and flipping the pages of the latest Typism book to see your work included in there.

There’s a saying by Karen Lamb that a year from now, you will wish you had started today. Daily lettering practice doesn’t need to take hours, small steps get big results. What matters most is consistency and improvement.

What can you change about your daily routine to help you practice like a pro?