Creative Monograms

COVID-19 Update: This course will now be held online over four Wednesday evenings, starting June 17.

Louis Vuitton. General Electric. The Victoria & Albert Museum. Some of the most famous brands in the world have built their identities around monograms. Even if you're not into branding, monograms are a great way to begin thinking about the relationship between two letterforms — even letters that may, at first glance, appear to be completely unrelated (C and W, anyone?!?). Finding and exploiting this relationship can inspire you to think differently (and more creatively) about the way you construct letters.

In November 2015, Hope Meng began an ambitious personal project to draw every combination of 2 letters that the alphabet provides us. Monogram Project kicked off with AA and will conclude sometime in the very far future with ZZ. For this workshop, we will look at some monograms throughout history, explore two different methods for arriving at a finished monogram, and share some typographic inspiration. The workshop will then shift into concepting and production of a monogram of your own design.

The first half of the class will be completely analog—we will concept and sketch several monogram designs and end the day with a group critique. In the second half we will go over tips for vectorizing letterforms and then shift into concepting and production of a monogram of your own design.

Please prepare 2-3 examples of typography that inspires you (does not need to be a monogram), your laptop, sketchbook, a variety of drawing materials, and tracing paper.

Required Materials

• minimum of 3 examples of typography or lettering that inspires you
• sketchbook
• preferred drawing tools (ex. pencil, markers, etc.)
• tracing paper
• laptop with Adobe Illustrator (for 2nd session)