Brush Lettering in Graphic Design of Book Covers

Note that, for book designers of young adult literature, a huge swathe of Gen Z is no longer able to read running writing. (This includes my own teenager who, despite being a good reader in general, requires me to read birthday cards handwritten by grandparents.)

First, the most recognisable brush lettering on book covers in the world:

Bristly, tapered brushes equal horror/thriller:

ATTEMPTING CURSIVE WITH AN INAPPROPRIATE BRUSH

The book covers below each use a similar semi-opaque (SVG) brush font with a non-professional feel to it. (Sobbers typeface is one example of these brushscript fonts. Mattera is another, though I suspect some of these titles were hand-drawn by the designer.)

For the non- hand-lettered font, try the **Moret** font family.

Here’s a non-running, opaque example of similar:

THE WARP GROUP TOOL IN AFFINITY DESIGNER 2

Sometimes designers fit text to a shape.

A designer’s eye will always be necessary, but from a technical point of view, creating word art like this is relatively easy since the addition of the Warp Group tool, which is what Affinity calls it.

MORE EXAMPLES OF BRUSH SCRIPT ON BOOK COVERS

I have a lot of brush and felt-tip typefaces in my library. They are appealing, but don’t tend to look good unless I play with the tilt, sizing and get the typeface combo exactly right.

Let’s take a close look at how designers work with brush fonts.

One thing that stands out (with few exceptions) is the absence of layer effects on the text (drop shadows, outlines and so on). These fonts are designed to stand on their own.

Brush typefaces are especially well-suited to transparency. Typefaces with transparency are SVG files, but they do require Adobe subscriptions to work. SVG fonts typically bundle with TTF or OTF versions, which will obviously work in cheaper software, but then you won’t get the transparent effects.

SVG fonts (as you can see by the transparency)

It is possible to manually add transparency effects to text with a textured eraser set to low opacity and sensitive to pressure. This one is clearly an SVG font — look at the ‘dd’ of ‘addicted’ — the transparency is exactly the same on both letters.

An interesting example — I suspect it was done with a vector brush at different widths, but may have started with a typeface.

Here is a rare example of a ‘shadow’, though note this isn’t making use of the drop shadow tool in Layer Effects. I would do this by duplicating the layer, placing below, changing to red and then using the Warp Group tool to pull it out, but not in a uniform way.