Martina Flor

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Martina Flor

Typography, logos & lettering explained. Award-winning lettering designer, author, TEDx speaker, and educator helping designers create work they're proud of.

07/10/2026

Most designers line up every crossbar at the same height and call it consistency. ✏️

That's usually the thing making a word feel slightly off, and it's one of the hardest problems to catch, because nothing is technically wrong. Every measurement checks out. The word still doesn't sit right.

That gap between correct and convincing is where most of the real work in lettering happens.

Save this for the next time something looks right and reads wrong.

Comment FIX and I'll send you five more small adjustments that make a big impact.

06/10/2026

Most people decorate a lettering piece by drawing the same little star forty times. ✏️

Then they change their mind about the star, and the whole afternoon goes into fixing forty of them.

There's a panel in Illustrator that solves this, and almost nobody uses it for lettering. You draw the ornament once, scatter it across the piece as many times as you like, and when you edit any single copy every other copy updates with it.

Decorate once, edit everywhere. Save this for your next ornamental piece.

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my free lettering guide.

05/10/2026

Most of us draw letters one at a time, which is exactly how two round letters end up disagreeing with each other. ✏️

Your o and your e are built on the same shape. Drawn separately, inconsistencies creep in: the stress of the o, meaning the angle running through its thickest points, ends up different from the stress of the e. Two round letters, two different axes.

So build the e from the o. Take the o as your base and keep the stress angles consistent with each other. Same axis, same family.

It's a subtle change, and now your rounded letters actually belong together. Consistency isn't drawing every letter perfectly. It's drawing them as a system.

Comment FIX and I'll send you five more small adjustments that make a big impact.

04/10/2026

Flipping your A upside down and deleting the crossbar gives you a V that looks almost right. ✏️

Almost, because the weight lands wherever the A happened to leave it. There's no system behind which stroke is thick and which is thin, so the contrast ends up arbitrary.

Contrast in letters isn't decoration. It comes from calligraphy, where the stroke going down is the heavy one and the stroke coming back up is the light one. Apply that to your V and the weight has a correct side.

One caveat worth remembering: a flipped A also needs its apex and width adjusted, since what reads well at the top of an A doesn't read the same at the bottom of a V.

Same letter. Better balance.

Comment FIX and I'll send you five more small adjustments that make a big impact.

03/10/2026

Every ornamental lettering piece you've ever admired started as plain letters on a page. ✏️

This one says DONE is Beautiful, which felt about right for a process that's really just five passes, each one adding a layer the one before it made room for.

That last part is the whole trick. The flourishes need the letters to be settled first. The inner texture needs the dimension already there to sit against. Do them in the wrong order and you spend the rest of the piece fighting yourself.

Nothing here is difficult on its own. The effect comes from the sequence.

Swipe through, and save this for your next piece.

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my practical guide to starting with lettering.

02/10/2026

Two typographic lessons hidden in the Stranger Things logo. ✏️

Both of them exist for the same reason. The eye doesn't measure, it judges. Equal weight doesn't look equal. Equal height doesn't look equal.

The diagonals in that wordmark are drawn heavier than the verticals so that they read as the same thickness. The G pushes past the line at the top and sits flat at the bottom, so it only gets corrected where it needs correcting.

Measure either one and the numbers look wrong. Look at them and they look right. That's most of what good lettering actually is.

Comment FIX and I'll send you five more small adjustments that make a big impact.

01/10/2026

Ribbon lettering looks like a special skill. It's one stroke and three moves. ✏️

The folds are the part everyone expects to be difficult, and they're really just geometry. You offset the stroke and close off the turns.

The move people skip is the last one. Flat colour gives you a shape. The gradient is what makes your eye believe the fold is a real piece of material catching light.

Save this for the next piece that feels flat.

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my free lettering guide.

30/09/2026

A perfect circle is not a letter O. 👀

It's the first thing almost everyone reaches for. It is also the single easiest shape to make in any design software, which is part of the problem: the wrong answer is one keystroke away and the right one takes three deliberate decisions.

Those three adjustments are what turn a circle into an actual O. None of them are dramatic. All of them are impossible to unsee once you know they are there.

Swipe through, and save this for the next time you draw one.

Comment FIX and I'll send you 5 more optical adjustments that make a big impact.

29/09/2026

Most lettering designers work slower than you'd think. 👀

Not fast, effortless, first-try magic.

After 15 years of drawing letters I still sketch the same word over and over, still work with guides in front of me, and still make plenty that never leaves the desk. None of that is a sign something has gone wrong. It is simply what the work looks like from the inside.

The reason it feels otherwise is that we only ever see each other's finished pieces. Nobody posts the eleven versions that came before.

Swipe through for five things that are completely normal and almost nobody talks about.

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my free lettering guide. ✏️

28/09/2026

Tuscan lettering isn't about starting complicated. It's about building detail step by step. 👀

In this reel I transformed a simple number 2 using petal-shaped ornaments, engraved texture lines, and interior decorative details. None of them are difficult on their own. The skill is in the order you add them, and in knowing when the shape underneath can carry one more layer.

Small additions can completely change the personality of a letterform.

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my free lettering guide. ✏️

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