cute
/kju:t/
adjective: attractive in a pretty or endearing way. (Oxford Dictionaries)
For my third post in our “Random Words” blog series, the word “Cute” was selected for me at random. For this post, I had to think happy thoughts and maybe channel a little bit of my inner 12-year-old girl. Weirdness aside, I thought about just posting a photo of the newest member of our family Elle (who we adopted recently), but then again, that would just be too easy (see photo below). Those ears? Come on.
Anyways, instead, I thought about the word and tried to think about how something “cute” would want to be portrayed: gently and with care. A freehand script piece of custom lettering would be the perfect fit.
I started the process of creating this type of lettering with a few sketches to get the idea down and figure out the lines. Next I began to draw the type digitally in Adobe Illustrator to vectorize it. Getting every single curve and connection point just right is a very painstaking process, but absolutely necessary to pull off this type of lettering. If one anchor point or curve is off and not in the right spot, it can throw off all of the other letters.
Next it was time to decide on color. I ended up choosing a soft, minty green for the lettering to keep the palette neutral and not too abrasive. I didn’t want to add anything else to the background of this piece because I liked the simplicity of white and thought it allowed the lettering to stand alone so nicely.
This was yet another great learning experience that pushed me to try out a different style of lettering. The creatives here at LaunchDM have been having a blast with the Random Words series, so you can expect to see more in the future!
