Need help with creating lettering practice sheets with guidelines and my letters

[Alma]

Hi all,
It has been a while since I have been around here. Life has been busy though I have continued my practice.

I will be teaching a hand-lettering workshop. For the occasion, I would like to create my own guidelines using my own letters either in Illustrator or in InDesign. I know I can download tons of guidelines but I would like to learn to make my own and put my letters on them. How does one go about that?

I am a designer so I am familiar with both programs, scanning and so on. The problem is that things do not really look clean or as sharp as I would like. I keep thinking if I was making a book, how would I go about creating both the guidelines and adding the letters and feel a tad lost.

Can anyone help me or point me in the right direction? I need to have these sheets to provide them to the workshop attendees.

Thank you!

[Erica McPhee]

Hi Alma,
I have always made my guidelines in Photoshop but only because I am not good at Illustrator. Even if you can make the guidelines in Illustrator, you may be better off scanning your work in Photoshop to add to the guidelines.

I also don't like how my guidelines look slightly soft (when made in PS). So I was hoping to make them in Illustrator eventually (vectorized). It might make  sense to scan your lettering in PS, make your guidelines in Illustrator, then put them together in InDesign. Eek! 

[Alma]

Ah, yes. I have done that before but it just never seems to look right for some reason. Thank you Erica!

[Estefa]

@Alma I make guidelines always in InDesign. Command alt U allows you to repeat the same lines (or any object) over and over in the distance you need. Then just add the scanned letters as tiffs and put them over the guidelines. I like to put the pics on a separate layer so I can lock the guidelines layer and don’t accidently change the lines’ position. Or you can put the guidelines on a master page, so they’re securely locked.

[Alma]

Thank you so much! I will try that. 

[Erica McPhee]

I will try that too, Stefanie! Thanks!