Lesson Nº0
Lettering sin límites.
Could we make a living drawing letters? Alejandra and I asked ourselves that years before I ever worked with AI.
AI loop, no sound · 12s
- Door: Can it even be done?
- Co-author, with Alejandra Perdomo
- Pencil, markers and Editorial Planeta
- 2016–present
- Published by Editorial Planeta, still in catalog
The blank page
Before we taught anyone, Alejandra and I spent about a year selling agendas, mugs and other things with lettering on them. We were already teachers, so we took our time putting a program together and training ourselves first. In April 2017 I posted a workshop on Instagram, in Bogotá, for June 24, and 600 people wrote to us asking for information and where they could pay right away. That's when we knew the interest was real. From there we gave hundreds of workshops, until about 2023, and built an online platform that ended up with almost 2,000 students. Somewhere along the way Editorial Planeta called. Writing the books was harder than teaching in one specific way, because in a workshop I can see when someone gets lost and explain again, and a book has to work for someone we'll never meet.
The studio wall
scroll sideways →
the three books, on the worktable
AI keyframe of the books, made before the loop
the tools, on the table
Honest weaknesses
The crit
A book can't be updated. The first one has a QR code that wasn't dynamic, so it's been dead since the first edition, and the book went through three editions with it. That one and the other mistakes we found after printing are still there in every copy.
We decided to stop at three books, because we didn't want to stretch it into eleven volumes selling the same thing with a new number on the cover. The students who finish them keep going with us in the online courses, but we still haven't figured out what to make next for someone who already learned all of this, and whatever it is, it won't be a book.
Shipped & taught
- My Lettering, founded 2016 with Alejandra Perdomo
- First workshop in Bogotá, June 24, 2017
- 3 books with Editorial Planeta
- More than 30,000 copies sold
- Almost 2,000 students on our online platform
What this taught me
What I'm proudest of is that the method kept working without us in the room, which is the whole reason you put something in a book. It's also the only project on this site I co-authored, and I think it shows. Alejandra and I worked better together than either of us would have on our own.