Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook by Abbey Sy was a nonfiction book that I actually got approved for in 2018 but unfortunately didn't download before it archived. I found this in my local library and decided to read and review it better late than never.
This was a great book for someone like myself who is always looking for tips and tricks to improve my handwriting for my bullet journal but especially for my reading journal. It definitely brought back fond memories of practising my handwriting at primary school.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in journalling or art.

This is more of a workbook than a actual book. Having said that, I have to say that both the “written content” part and the worksheets make this a really valuable resource for those looking to learn the basics of lettering. Sy provides the tips, tricks, and tools required for getting started and getting better with crisp and clear explanations. I love how she includes the rookie mistakes to avoid, as well as ideas to inspire us as we letter along with her.

Do you recall practicing cursive writing as a young child on those worksheets, over and over again? This book will bring back those “fond” memories (I did enjoy practicing my cursive so they were fond memories for me!!). While I hoped to have a few more sheets for practice, I made copies of the pages for multiple uses.

Use this along with her other book titled Hand Lettering A to Z: A World of Creative Ideas for Drawing and Designing Alphabets (as well as some of the tools needed) to make it a complete lettering-learning experience and/or gift.

In Summary
A great resource for all beginner calligraphers and for anyone who loves writing or journaling or art too!

Source: e-RC from NetGalley (originally) + my personal copy now

'Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook: Essential Instruction and 80+ Worksheets for Modern and Classic Styles' by Abbey Sy is a collection of practice sheets for all kinds of alphabets.

Starting with an introduction to different types of lettering and tools to create those alphabets, the book is then a series of pages for the user to practice letters. That is about all the description that this book needs.

I read another book by Abbey Sy and I find her lettering styles have a nice flow and her alphabets are approachable. With enough practice, which this book provides room for, the user should show nice improvement in their technique.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Quarto Publishing Group - Rockport Publishing, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

As a beginner to hand lettering I felt this book was very helpful. It gave me plenty of ideas to get started and then the workbook pages so I could practice. I feel like this isn't the best to have as an ebook but the ideas and tips in it are great.

It is a very thorough guide of handlettering. The explanations are very simple and clear, several fonts are described and the materials that can be used are also well explained. There are 80 pages of very useful exercises.. Also very useful for learning some characters to decorate the bullett journal.
It is recommended for those who already have the basic knowledge of handlettering

Hand Lettering from A to Z Workbook
by Abbey Sy

The Hand Lettering from A to Z guide, is one of the more thorough ones I have read with good explanations and beautiful designs; which fascinated me and had me continue reading the book. It covers the basics, using the appropriate terminology, included the flourishes and embellishments on the letters; even has the ideal practice sheets included.

The practice sheets were impressive, which is helpful having paper to the same scale and has the same lines as the guides you are using; people underestimate how important that is. 8 full fonts/scripts are included in this guild, to aid the readers that are using the practice sheets; which including lowercase and uppercase, the numbers and some of the basic punctuation. It’s incredibly in-depth. Lots of pictures with detailed instructions as well as ideas.

Colorful, visually appealing and a great starter book for a beginner or used as a refresher for someone that is back to using this method of writing. This is more how to draw letters then it is teaching calligraphy or brush script. Hand Lettering from A to Z, would be a recommend for the reader that is looking to learn how to letter using more of a drawing method not Calligraphy script style writing.

The author Abbey Sy has a great writing skill and an ablity to explain the technical aspects of how to do the steps for the lettering. Explaining essence of terminology and how it all relates to the craft of Hand Lettering. I was hoping for a bit more about Calligraphy techniques; but it is a great beginner’s book. I received an advanced copy and am writing my honest thoughts and feeling on the book. I am giving a 4-stars rating.

This is a great gift or buy for yourself, especially if you know you want to practice hand lettering but don't know where to start. Would Highly recommend.

“Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook” is a very accessible workbook aimed at beginners in hand-lettering who want to start with a good foundation and traditional letter form styles. The first few pages are spent on exploring the basics of typography, hand-lettering, and layout; there is not a lot of detail on any one topic here, but there’s no fat, either. The prose is very direct and to-the-point, and Abbey Sy includes recommendations for specific tools and methods.

Sy offers a good variety of styles for the beginner, from simple handwriting and serif letter forms to cursive scripts and bounce-lettering. She walks through the basics of layout, especially for a single quote or short phrase, as well as process — from a rough penciled template to a fully inked and colored end-product. Along the way, she includes many examples of different sketches, scripts, and fully-rendered quotes, to fuel the artist’s imagination. She also offers different character types and variants, special characters, and embellishments.

The introductory material is fairly short, and the rest of the book is made up of practice pages, first for the different letter forms and styles, and then for full quotes. It’s important to note that this book does not delve into traditional calligraphy at all, but focuses on more accessible brush scripts and drawn letter forms. The book is also peppered with handy tips to help you avoid rookie mistakes — always check your spelling before you ink, for example! — and to help you accomplish a finished product.

While this book may not be of much interest to an experienced hand-lettering artist, it’s a great place to start, especially for anyone who may want to hand-letter their own cards and gifts, or add a bit of pizzazz to their journaling and scrap-booking. Accessible and thorough, “Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook” is a great place to start your hand-lettering journey and build a solid foundation for an ongoing practice. By the time you’ve worked your way through, you should have a thorough understanding of the hand-lettering process, and the ability to create polished, professional-looking typography art and gifts.
by Sarah McMenomy of PaganPages.org
http://paganpages.org/content/2019/04/book-review-hand-lettering-a-to-z-workbook/

This is an excellent resource for anyone looking to grow their lettering skills. You do need to have a general basis of knowledge on how to use your pens/ markers properly. This book gave me excellent ideas for new fonts to try and inspiration to keep working on learning my lettering. I would have liked a bit more guidance on the actual formation of some of the letters- I'd consider this more of an intermediate book than a beginner book.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy so I could share my honest opinions with you.

This would be a useful book for anyone trying to improve their lettering styles. As a lover of journalling this book was great with lots of space to practise (or would have been in a physical copy). There were explanations of the different styles before pages to copy and rehearse the styles. After practise of each letter in each style, they were pulled together to create different quotes in a variety of languages.

Thanks to the publishers and author for access to an earc of this book via NetGalley

I love hand-lettering and I especially loved having this book! I used it to improve upon my hand-lettering, as I started getting into it a few years ago. Something that I loved specifically about this book is the illustration/demonstration text that you can use as a guide for your own work. It is very crisp and clean, the lines are well drawn and easy to follow. For me, it is difficult to let loose and add flourishes at the ends of letters and great creative. This workbook is nice because it teaches the basics but also gives you some room to create your own style.

The book is good for beginners. It starts with explaining basic terminology and explains which tools and materials you need for hand lettering. There are lots of cute little drawings and different ideas for painting beautifuls letters. The biggest part of the book consists of worksheets. Unfortunately, they weren't really helpful in an e-book. All in all, the book can be really helpful, but I expected a little more.

I guess this is 'follow on' to another of the author's books (?) ... while there were many practice pages for various fonts, there was little or no information about the actual penmanship required to create them. So while useful and nicely illustrated, it would have been better to have more instruction and fewer blank practice pages. The traceable quotations were lovely, and would make great projects for those starting out with hand lettering.
Thanks to the publisher for a digital review copy.

As a hobby artist, I am always looking for instruction books to learn new techniques. My Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook did help me pick up new skills and I enjoyed doing it.~

This is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn how to write fancy things, or even just to improve their handwriting. I'm a fountain pen user, so I'm looking forward to trying this with one of my flex nibs. First I want to buy a paper copy so that I can actually use the worksheets (not so useful in ebook format, as you can imagine). Highly recommended!

Thank you Quatro Publishing - Rockport amd Netgalley for an ARc of this book in return of my honest review.

Unfortunately I was only able to download the first 75 pages of this book so ina, reviewing based on these pages.

This was a great book showing how to do lettering and add embellishments. I was confident that I could create some nice lettering and the hard copy book has tear put practice pages which is ideal for practicing.

This is a companion book to Abbey Sy's other typography book "Hand Lettering A to Z" (which I did not read), but I am familiar with Sy's work from her "Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy: The Essential Reference for Novice and Expert Letterers and Calligraphers" which I read and loved.

That being said... as a personal opinion I do not understand why workbooks or journals are considered books on Goodreads and NetGalley. There isn't much to review here since it's just a workbook, with little information as it goes hand in hand with Sy's other books.

This is another great reference/resource for those who want to have better hand writing. It does give pages for you to practice so you don't have to use up/look for empty pages. There is also emblishments and quotes to have a look at.

Note: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

After getting started with word doodles (see a previous review I did for The Art of Doodle Words) I quickly learned that I am really a beginner at hand lettering. I’m always jealous of the nice letter art I see online so a workbook like Hand Lettering A to Z Workbook by Abbey Sy sounded like something I could really use.

Sy starts the book by setting out the terminology used. Sy slowly explains all types of letters and fonts and then moves on to explaining the tools and techniques. After the long and detailed background information, the main part of the book contains several alphabets and a lot of room to practice all the letters and numbers. After the alphabets there are worksheets to practice several words, flourishes, embellishments and inspirational quotes.

This is a very complete book to get started with hand lettering. With so much information and room to practice it is a good introduction and I can say I have added some nice touches to my own journals.

A lot to work at hand lettering
Abbey Sy presents the "Hand lettering A to Z Workbook - Essential instruction and 80+ Worksheets for Modern and Classic Styles—Easy Tear-Out Practice Sheets for Alphabets, Quotes, and More" published by Quarto Publishing Group - Rockport Publishing. The basic instructions are concise and informative. The workbook underlines the importance of practice when one wants to engage in hand lettering. It gives examples of font styles, suggests different art materials (graphite and colored pencils, brush pens, fineline markers, ...), and offers more than 80 different worksheets which can be torn out. There are not only the "usual" worksheets, but also worksheets for bounced words in different languages, worksheets for flourishes and embellishments, and worksheets for inspirational quotes in color and gray-shades for exercise, also in various languages.
It is disappointing that the book comes as a paperback and not spiral-bound. This is difficult for the user who wants to work directly in the book because the book does no lie flat and it is difficult to scan or copy the worksheets when one does not want to tear them out. My recommendation is to cut the spine of and have the book spiral- or comb-bound for better use. Another solution would be if the worksheets would be offered as downloadable files in PDF-format, but sadly they are not.
I recommend the book for readers who have already knowledge about hand lettering or who own the author's previous book (Hand Lettering A to Z: A World of Creative Ideas for Drawing and Designing Alphabets) or a similar book. I recommend the book also for people who are interested in bullet journaling since they can use the hand lettering for creative application in their bullet journals. I do not recommend this book for beginners who yet lack the basic knowledge about hand lettering. For them I recommend a more detailed guide since this is only a workbook.

The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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