Layouts for Lettering: Hierarchy, Composition, and Type Systems

Jon Contino opens this class with an unusual disclaimer: he is not going to teach anyone how to hand letter. That single boundary shapes everything that follows. Instead of pen technique, the 84 minutes are spent on the layer that sits above the letterforms: where they go, how big they get, and what they sit next to. For anyone who already has a lettering practice but keeps producing pieces that feel cramped or directionless, that is exactly the gap worth closing.

Structure and arc

The class opens with a compressed design-history lesson, moving from illuminated manuscripts through Art Nouveau packaging (Alphonse Mucha's cigarette ads get singled out as an early bridge between fine art and commercial graphic design) into early 20th-century advertising and mid-century poster work. It is a fast tour, but it is doing real work: Contino uses each period to demonstrate one idea, that the grid and the hierarchy of "what gets read first" have existed since the earliest printed material, and that studying old work is a legitimate shortcut to understanding modern layout.

From there the class turns practical. The centerpiece is a full walkthrough of a book cover project, where Contino sketches a rectangle, drops in placeholder shapes for the title, subtitle and author name, and physically counts out how the copy breaks into readable "beats" before deciding how the words should be arranged. It is a slow, almost remedial process on screen, and that is the point: he is demonstrating that professional layout work starts with dumb shapes and negative space, not with finished art.

The type-pairing framework

The back half shifts to type systems, structured around four questions Contino says he asks on every project: what is the theme, is there an obvious lettering style that fits it, should the styles vary or stay consistent, and how do those choices support the hierarchy already established. He walks through this with real client work rather than invented examples, comparing 1918 versus 1922 reference lettering for a Lincoln Motor Company spot, breaking down why baseball and military lettering read the way they do, and dissecting a poster for the band The National where the headline font is echoed, stripped of serifs, into the date beneath it to create a visual bond between the two.

The final lesson on integrating type with photography is the most transferable section for anyone working with client-supplied images: Contino shows two versions of the same lettering treatment for a bicycling photo and a whitewater-rafting photo, explaining why a light, flowing script worked for one and had to be scrapped for a dense, claustrophobic block on the other.

The trade-off is that the class leans almost entirely on Contino's own portfolio. There is no student project rubric, no critique of outside work, and no discussion of digital tools beyond a passing mention of Illustrator. Viewers get one designer's process in detail rather than a broader survey of approaches. For an intermediate audience that already has letterforms in hand, that depth is more useful than breadth would be, but it does mean the course teaches a way of thinking more than a set of exercises to check off.

What you will learn

• ·How to break a layout into hierarchy tiers and translate a client brief into thumbnail shapes before any finished lettering goes down
• ·A repeatable four-question framework for choosing a lettering or type style that matches a project's theme, tone and audience
• ·How to read positive and negative space in a page and use grids, arcs and beats to control where a viewer's eye lands first
• ·How to pair a primary lettering style with supporting type so the two share enough DNA to read as one unified system
• ·How to size and weight lettering so it sits with, rather than fights, a photograph or illustration
• ·How historical reference points, from illuminated manuscripts through Art Nouveau packaging to mid-century posters, translate into practical layout choices today