Assignment Bootcamp: Lettering 2024

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You’ll get fifteen of these cool Micro Mini Assignments, each with an optional bonus assignment. Paste them into a sketchbook to build your own reference source.

For the first week of every month (Monday to Friday), you’ll get one of my unique lettering pages, each featuring a different style of lettering. I had a ball searching out vintage typography at used bookstores and vintage shops, and spotting all kinds of amazing lettering and typographic styles on cool products like chocolate bars, coffee, posters and more. Each page also includes an optional bonus assignment.

In the second week of each month, you’ll get an assignment that will help you to create some gorgeous art for your portfolio and which you can use to help you get paying gigs.

Being able to do lettering is fantastic for your creative career, and is used across a ton of wonderful art markets. Check out these gorgeous products, agented by Lilla Rogers.

In the third week of each month you’ll get some great bonus content. Scroll down to the Schedule tab to see what kind of thing this might be.

In the fourth week of each month, enjoy an energising and inspiring live Zoom event with me and your fellow students, where you can ask questions, see fabulous new products, chat with the other people in class and lots more.

So many great art markets need your beautiful lettering, like this dreamy packaging. Let Lilla show you how to give your art career a huge boost.

So to sum up, here’s what you’ll get:

• 15 pages of lettering styles to create a reference source, 15 micro mini assignments to practice your lettering, plus 15 optional bonus assignments
• Three assignments to create three pieces of art for your portfolio to help you land lettering gigs
• Three surprise pieces of bonus content which could be an instructional video, a download, or a guest artist interview
• Three live Zooms with Lilla. Ask Lilla your questions in a live real-time video each month! (Plus Lilla always has words of wisdom, show and tell, giveaways, and other tricks up her sleeve for you in these popular live events.)
• Access to a private Facebook group. You’ll enjoy an invaluable community of like-minded artists of all levels to inspire, support and motivate you. 
• Public Gallery Exposure. Show your work! You’ll have the option to post your work to a public gallery where it can be viewed by Lilla, peers, art directors and buyers, and other industry experts. Who knows who might spot your work?

Grab your spot now!

Week 1: Experiment Week

In my usual Assignment Bootcamp class, you get an assignment the first Monday of every month. But this time I’m mixing things up a little. Instead, you get to try out a little bit of lettering every day for the first week of every month. Go ahead and load up your plates from the buffet of lettering!

Depending on how much time you have to spare, you could spend just five or ten minutes doing your Micro Mini assignment with your morning coffee, or you could spend an hour or more by adding on the bonus assignment included on each daily page.

The cool part is that these pages are large (letter size) for two reasons. First, I want you to see the lettering on the photo very clearly, and second, you’ll to be able to print them out and tape them into a journal on the left-hand page. Your practice work goes on the right-hand page.

Guess what? At the end of class, you’ll have a luscious lettering encyclopedia of fifteen styles. (If you don’t want to print anything out, you can simply draw from the page on your screen.)

Create your own lettering reference resource with Assignment Bootcamp: Lettering

Week 2 Assignment Week

In the second weeks of each month, I’ll give you a lettering assignment for a contemporary product. You can use any of the lettering styles you’ve learned so far, or your own invented style. This assignment gives you a great piece for your portfolio that you can send to clients to show them what you’re capable of, to attract cool lettering gigs.

Illustration and lettering by Erica Root

Week 3: Bonus

The third Monday of each month will be a surprise. It might include any of the following:

• Maybe a juicy pre-recorded interview with a top artist who’s done a lot of lettering for their career for products like arty books, children’s books, home decor products, journals, and more.
• Maybe a pre-recorded interview with, say, a children’s book art director, where I’ll ask what exactly they look for from an artist.
• Maybe a bonus lettering page.
• Maybe a little technique video into a favorite art supply.

Week 4: Live with Lilla on Zoom

And finally, one of my favorite parts of Bootcamp is the last Monday of each month when we get together on a Zoom. Here’s what to expect:

• Ask agent Lilla Anything

Got a question? Pop it in the chat or volunteer to pop up on screen if you are of the extroverted ilk.

• Show and Tell

I’ll show you the latest commercial products my represented artists have illustrated or written, for inspiration.

• Breakout Rooms

Finally stick around for the private breakout rooms with two other fellow students, and you can chat. My students tell me this is one of their favorite things. You’ll find your people, make new friends, and get advice from the kindest, smartest, funniest group of people out there. It’s totally optional and you can always keep your video off if you like.

If you can’t attend, all videos are recorded for you to watch or listen to at your convenience.

Sign up today!

Many people already know me as an art and art/literary agent and former illustrator, but I’ve also been obsessed with a lettering from a young age.

Back in the 1960s, penmanship was my favorite class in 3rd grade. We learned the script capital Q written like the number 2. Even then it felt so quirky and cool and vintage-y. It was one subject where I actually paid attention.

In 1973, I studied Chinese calligraphy at the University of Wisconsin. Fun fact: my future husband (who I would not meet till the late 80s) also took Chinese calligraphy that very same year, at Princeton. I’ve never met anyone my age who was not Asian who took Chinese calligraphy in college, so it was obviously destiny that we would marry a decade later.

In the mid-1970s, I took a class with the great calligrapher, Barbara Bash, at the then tiny Buddhist school called Naropa in Boulder, Colorado. She was methodical and calm, which helped slow me down.

Fresh out of art school in Oakland, I taught middle school art in a rural, blue collar New Jersey town. I taught my kids calligraphy using graph paper  and felt tip italic markers, which were brand new on the market and a revelation, because it meant we didn’t have to use messy and awkward dip pens and ink.

In the early 80s, as an illustration grad student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, I taught calligraphy classes at home and made enough money quit my secretarial job at the small alternative newspaper, the Bay Guardian. There was no internet to advertise on in those days, so instead I stapled posters on phone poles throughout my Castro neighborhood.

By the late 80s and early 90s, when I was living in New York and working as a full-time illustrator, my quirky brush lettering was a major aspect of my Illustration career. My clients included Bergdorf’s, Bloomingdales, Vogue, the Washington Post, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Chronicle Books and Oprah Magazine.

Just a few of my lettering gigs!

Cosmetics giant Estée Lauder paid me $2,000 (two months’ rent back then, or almost $5,000 in today’s money) to write the words ‘Sweet Dreams’ for a seasonal beauty campaign. My four-page ad for Levi’s appeared in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and about a dozen other magazines.

To sum up, I just love lettering and I want to share that love of lettering with you. Plus lettering is great for your career and fantastic to have in your portfolio!

Sign up to class here!

Is this for you?

 There’s the:

“Lilla, get me started in lettering” people

And the

“Lilla, I want to up my professional illustration game. Help me improve my lettering in a really fun way!” people.

Ceramics by Lilla Rogers

Let’s start with the “Lilla, get me started in lettering” people

• You love playing around with lettering and want to get better
• You’re not really an artist that draws people and scenes and things but you like pens and paper
• You’d like a wellness practice, a calming art activity that doesn’t require drawing skills, a way to make journaling more fun and gorgeous
• You want a very doable course that can fit into your life, and something inspiring every Monday for 3 months
• You want lettering taught in a way that is very inspiring and yet you totally can get good at your lettering, trying out a variety of styles.

This is hand lettering, no digital skills needed. Use a journal, paper, pencil and a micron pen and if you like, any art supplies to add color, like colored pencil to markers to paint.

Next up, the “Lilla, I want to up my professional illustration game. Help me improve my lettering in a really fun way!”

• You’re an artist or professional artist looking to up your lettering game. You want to learn more lettering styles—15 in fact!—and learn from an art agent who knows what’s happening in the illustration/lettering world
• You want three monthly lettering assignments based on the lettering exercises from the previous week for your portfolio to attract actual work
• You want the structure of assignments and deadlines, and a gallery to upload your work to
• You know that lettering opens all kinds of illustration commissions—as an agent, it’s practically a must for who I take on, and want to add lettering work to your portfolio (website, Insta)
• You want to get your work in front of an art agent (me!)

You want to learn from someone who made a big portion of her illustration income with lettering

Plus you want a private Facebook group full of positive energy, full of likeminded lettering folks, rather than social media which can be challenging. It’s your people. Ask advice on art supplies, etc.

Gorgeous lettering by Lilla Rogers

Required materials

You can do the exercises in this course with any medium, whether it’s traditionally, e.g. using pen, pencil, marker, calligraphy fountain pen, dip pen, etc, or digitally, e.g. using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or Procreate.

If you’re working traditionally, you will be primarily drawing letters that require detail, so you’ll want a pencil to sketch out the letterforms, and fine point marker, such as a Micron or similar fine point pens to outline your letters. They have a good, sharp point and a rich black color. Go ahead and get them in a few thicknesses, such as 03 and 08. For filling in your outlines of the letterforms, you’ll want a thicker pen like the Posca 0.7 which gives you a really nice, rich black.

If you want to print out your daily Micro Mini pages and glue or tape them into a book, I suggest you use a large sketchbook, journal, or any large notebook.

The pages are US Letter size/UK A4, so a book that size or larger is great. To save money, get any kind of notebook that is the size of the pages and use any paper to do your lettering on, then you can simply tape your pages into the journal. You can use fancy paper or even printer paper to work on. Lettering with marker is pretty forgiving.

Conversely, simply view the Daily Micro Minis on your screen and draw on anything! Just be sure to keep all your work in one place so you have a reference library of styles to refer to later.

Join Lilla in Assignment Bootcamp: Lettering – Sign up today!

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FAQs

If you have a question about Make Art That Sells please check these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) first. If you do not find an answer to your question here please feel free to contact us at [email protected].

Q: I’ve never taken an online class before. How does it work? Do I need to be at my computer at a certain time?

A: You will have access to new content each Monday for three months in a beautiful password-protected online classroom. Each month, you’ll get a new assignment made up of several lessons: first Micro Mini assignments which allow you to create and experiment without worrying about the end result; and then the Main assignment, in which you’ll turn your initial ideas into a full-blown portfolio piece ready to snag great clients. You’ll do one full assignment per month, and have the option to post your work to a public gallery where it can be viewed by Lilla and other art agents, your peers, potential clients, art directors, and other industry experts.

You only need to be online at a certain time if you want to join the live monthly sessions. If you can’t join live, replays will be saved in the classroom for you to view when it suits you.

Q: What format is the class taught in?

A: The class consists of a series of Micro Minis and Assignment PDFs delivered via a password-protected online classroom. There are also instructional videos and interactive Facebook live sessions, and a few other fun bonuses!

Q: What do you get in Bootcamp?

A: Each month you’ll create one finished portfolio piece for a different art market, chosen by Lilla. She knows exactly what is popular now, upcoming future trends, and what sells like hotcakes.

You’ll get  warm-up monthly Micro Mini assignments to teach you more about your own artistic style, and give you space to experiment without worrying about the end result; this is a great way of loosening up before you dive into the Main assignment. You’ll also get the Main assignments, which will bring all your prep work together to create a finished portfolio piece each month. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve.

There’s a monthly live session with Lilla, in which she’ll cover different aspects of art-making. A replay will be available in the online classroom after the event if you can’t join live or want to rewatch it.

There are also bonus materials such as video tutorials, interviews with industry experts, downloadable worksheets and more.

Q: Can I interact with Lilla during the course?

A: You can comment and ask questions during Lilla’s monthly live sessions in our private Facebook group. Lilla may pop in from time to time, so keep an eye out! Remember you can always ask questions of the super-supportive MATS community in the private group.

Q: How much time will the class take?

A: Bootcamp is designed so you can keep up even if you have a full-time job or other significant commitments. There is only 1 big assignment per month (plus mini assignments).

Q: I will be away for some of the time the class is running. Does this matter?

A: Assignment Bootcamp: Portfolio is spread out over three months so it’s likely that most students will be away at some point. With a month to complete each assignment, you should be fine. If you miss the deadline for sharing your art in the public gallery each month, you’re welcome to share in the class Facebook group for peer feedback.

Q: Do I need any special materials?

A: The course looks at art using a variety of media. We encourage you to try new things, so it is up to you. Use any materials you like – digital or traditional. Just get out your favorite art supplies! You can use a scanner or even your smartphone camera to photograph your work. You may find it useful to have access to a printer to print out course materials.

Q: Do I need any special software?

A: As with all MATS classes, it’s possible to complete the entire course using traditional techniques (painting, drawing, etc.), but if you wish to complete the assignments digitally you’ll need basic knowledge of Photoshop or Illustrator. Photograph or scan in your assignments to showcase your work at its best.

Q: Will I be able to communicate with others in the class?

A: Yes, you’ll be able to communicate in the private Facebook group (where you can also share your work). This is a great chance to connect with other artists and designers, get different perspectives and share your work.

Q: Is this an art class or a business class?

A: This class is purely assignment-based aimed at helping you strengthen your portfolio and create commercially-viable pieces. Lilla shares advice and tips, but if you are looking for significant business/industry insight please consider taking one of our other popular live courses.

Sign up to Assignment Bootcamp: Lettering today!

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