Lettering vs typography: what is the difference

In lettering vs typography, the difference is reuse. Lettering is drawing letters for one particular piece: a logo, a shop sign, a book title, where every letter can be shaped to fit its neighbours and the space. Typography is arranging letters from fonts: ready made characters designed to work in any order, at any size, in any amount of text. Lettering gives you something nobody else has. Typography gives you consistency, speed and readability across everything you publish. Most brands need both.

Definitions: lettering, typography, calligraphy and type design

Four related crafts get mixed up constantly. The clearest way to separate them is to ask what is being made and whether it can be reused.

The line between lettering and calligraphy is how the letters are made. A calligrapher writes: one movement of the pen makes a stroke. A letterer draws: outlines are sketched, refined and filled, so a single stroke can be built from many marks. Brush lettering sits in between, and the names overlap in everyday use. Script fonts imitate both, with the limits of reuse.

How lettering and typography differ in practice

That last row is the real trade. Lettering is a one off, so changing a word means redrawing it. Typography is a system, so you can change a price, translate a menu or make a hundred social posts in an afternoon. Typography basics covers how good typesetting works.

Famous examples of lettering

Many of the world's best known logos started as drawn or written letters, not fonts. That is part of why they are so recognisable: no font contains them.

A logo made of letters alone is called a wordmark, and the best ones are usually lettering, or a font so heavily customised it becomes lettering. Wordmarks walks through how to make one.

When to use lettering and when to use typography

• Use lettering for a logo or wordmark, a shopfront or mural, a book or album title, a one off poster headline, and anything that must look like nobody else's.
• Use typography for body text, menus, websites, apps, social series, packaging information and anything that changes or needs translating.
• Use both when a lettered name or title sits above typeset details. This is how most good posters, covers and brands work.

How to start hand lettering

1. 1

   Write the word many times

   Fast pencil thumbnails, ten or twenty versions, in different styles: tall, wide, script, block. Don't refine yet.

2. 2

   Pick a skeleton

   Choose the version with the best overall shape and redraw it larger as single lines, the skeleton of each letter.

3. 3

   Add weight

   Thicken the strokes around the skeleton. In scripts, downstrokes are heavy and upstrokes thin, as if made with a pen.

4. 4

   Fix the spacing by eye

   Balance the space between letters so it looks even, not measures even. Lettering lets you adjust each pair.

5. 5

   Trace it as vectors

   Scan or photograph it and redraw it with clean curves in a vector app, so it scales from a business card to a sign.

Lettering treatments: the middle ground

Between drawn lettering and plain type sits a useful middle ground: type with a treatment applied, such as an outline, an inline, depth or a print effect. It keeps the editability of a font with some of lettering's character. Outline text, 3D text effects and retro text effects show the classics.

Gradiently has eight of these built in: Contour, Inline, Cut, Extrude, Double, Trail, Riso and Halo, each drawn in the colours of the Mark behind the words. Because the words stay real text, you can still change them, resize the design or translate it. Lettering effects explains each one and when it suits.