What about doing a Lettering Challenge together?

You only need 10 minutes a day to escape the daily stress and improve in your craft

Hi everyone,

The last weeks have been interesting in many ways and I did not think it would lead me to that post when I started my “30 days of fonts” challenge.

I already talked about it earlier this week but the challenge I started 19 days ago is really giving me joy and helps me to look further in my style and process. What was supposed to be just a promotion challenge for my fonts ended in a daily practice to use my fonts in my style. Again check Tuesday’s post for more details. But now I feel like I want to push further, do some more Mid Modern Century illustration, with a lot of overlaps, working with limited colors and use my lettering style with it. Or my fonts. Or other fonts. But yes, having started to make visuals in my own style gave me the motivation to explore even more.

So I thought, I could continue my challenge until end of July without using my fonts but only with lettering and a LOT of retro illustration. Just play on my iPad daily with a few colors, a few brushes and see where I go. This is adventure.

And then I thought that could be a good idea to invite you to participate to that challenge. I did the “100 days of lettering” three times with many people, maybe some of you did them. But 100 days can be impressing. So why not start with 30 days?

So let me explain why I think it is a good opportunity for you to do that challenge:

• you practice each day. You choose a time during your day, in your planning, and you do it every day for at least 10 minutes. It could become a routine at the end.

• Practicing each day helps you find your style, define your style, improve your style.

• It makes your brain/mind/head more aware of ideas. Stimulating your brain every day makes that you might see ideas everywhere. This is really crazy sometimes. Have a notebook with you everywhere you go :)

• It gives you confidence. Sometimes your drawings will be like sh*t but that’s ok. At least you tried and the day after will be better.

• It takes you out of your confort zone. Or at least give you permission to do so. And you might find or discover some style you did not think about or you are proud of.

How do I see that challenge so it is “easy” to do:

• No pressure, only 10 minutes a day is a good start.

• It is great to publish online but it is not mandatory. For some people it is a good pressure, for some others it is too much pressure.

• Choose a subject, style or technique. And focus on it for 30 days. It is important to know where you go with the challenge and why you do it. So make it simple, choose what you want to learn/improve and go for it. If you have 10 minutes a day, it is good you don’t spend half of that time trying to see what you could draw. So plan in advance and focus on one thing.

• I am here to help you and to give you feedback if you need it. If you work on something, you are not sure about it and want to talk about it, just leave a comment below, post an image of your work or give a link and we will discuss about it. We will use the comment section here to make it easy to chat and to keep things at the same place.

• This is an opportunity to do something together in a simple way. If you post on Instagram, tag me “fran6” so I can see your work and leave a comment.

• Last point: if you know people who could be interested in that challenge, just share that post so they learn about our challenge and they can comment and post their work in the comments too. Don’t hesitate to share it with your community too, if you think it is worth it. Here is the link to share the post:

So what do you think? Would you be interested? Have questions? You want to do it but have to find time? Or you leave on vacation for two weeks? No pressure, you can do 15 days straight and you can find 10 minutes minimum each day. Like skip 10 minutes of screen in your day, that should be easy to do :P Make it easy for you.

When will it start? I would say the coming Monday. But if you are many people interested and want to start later, just let me know.

And last thing, I would like to know if some of you are interested. So can you reply to the email to let me know or leave a quick comment? Thanks :)

And again if you have questions, please leave a message. I want it to be as simple as possible and as participative as possible so don’t hesitate to chat about it in the comments so we can all exchange about our fears for example :) And if you don’t feel like it that is totally fine.

This is it for today. Enjoy your weekend, think about that challenge and if you want to do it or not. Again, this could also be a good opportunity for you if you want feedback from me or others. It could be also beneficial for you :)

Take care,

Francis