Book Review: Awesome Alphabets
Written and Illustrated by Mike Artell
Have
you been wanting to add some terrific hand-lettering to your journaling or page
titles? Are you intimidated by your lack of artistic skills? Have you already
decided that you don't have the talent necessary to add creative lettering to
your pages? Are you looking for some new ideas to jazz-up your scrapbook pages?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then the book Awesome
Alphabets is for you.
Originally written for students as a guide to creative lettering techniques for original book covers, Awesome Alphabets has proven to be a useful tool for adults too. Mike Artell is a children's book author and illustrator who is invited to visit dozens of schools every year. During one of his visits, he was helping some students come up with original and eye-catching lettering for covers of their own books. The students were so excited by the techniques he was teaching that the idea for this book was born.
The book is divided into four sections, each of which encourage the reader to take the ideas shown and add a touch of individuality to them to make them unique. The first section contains 18 sets of original alphabets, including "fuzzy letter," "animal letters," and "lightening letters." As you flip through the alphabets, Mike's simple techniques will inspire you to get out a paper and pen and try some of your own.
At the end of section one, the book focuses on a technique that would work especially well for scrapbookers. Mike calls the letters A, B, D, O, P, Q, and R "special letters." Each of them has a hole which is the perfect place to add drawn-in faces, objects, or animals, giving the letters a personality all their own. A scrapbook page title of "FLOWER POWER," for example, could have a daisy drawn in place of the holes in the letters O and P. Or, "SPLASH" could have a water splash drawn in place of the holes in the P and A, with drops of water shooting out from the title as a whole. These few pages of the book alone contain a wealth of ideas for scrapbookers and could easily revolutionize your lettering.
Section two takes you from focusing on the individual letters to zeroing in on the words as whole units. Techniques such as shaping words, creating action with your animated words, and making your words look "hot, cold, and wet" are covered in this section. Each new idea presented includes several examples and a short inspiring comment from Mike, such as "You can probably come up with a ton of different ideas. Try it!"
The third section is titled "Special Effects." It includes ideas such as twisting and looping your titles, adding details, and drawing in entire backgrounds for your words. Practicing each of these techniques as Mike encourages you to do on every page, will add a new depth to your lettering. Soon you will be amazing yourself with the originality and artistry of your page titles.
The fourth and last section of the book helps the reader come up with ways to use these newly honed skills. As I said at the beginning of this review, Mike originally intended this book to help students create unique, artistic covers for their own writing. However, he realized right away that these same ideas could be used for banners, posters, signs, comic strips, greeting cards and more. Only after the book had been on the market for some time, did Mike find out that scrapbookers are loving these lessons! The simple presentation and easy to read format make this book something that every scrapbooker can easily add to his/her idea library. An added benefit is that the book is published in paperback and available from Barnes and Noble online for only $9.95 plus shipping.
Purchasing Information:
Title: Awesome Alphabets
Author/Illustrator: Mike Artell
ISBN: 0673586472
Format: Paperback
Retail List Price: $9.95
Happy Scrapping!
Rebecca
Buy this book now!
