Lessons

Lesson Info

Addressing a White Envelope

Let's, start talking about envelope addressing so again, we're not just gonna start off with white, you can basically use one of these guide sheets, which I just sort of cut to shape it's basically the guide sheet that I have on on the downloadable information pdf it's those exact guidelines, you know, those lines of the horizontal and the diagonal lines, it's just trimmed down a little bit so it can fit an envelope and I actually think I shrunk this down a printed it like seventy five percent just to make the the lines just a little bit smaller. So when I'm addressing an envelope, this is what I'm going to use, um inside of my inside of my envelope just so I can make sure that I'm still writing straight because to this day, I cannot write a straight line. Um, so when we get to this point, I will turn this on and I'll be able to see a little bit better. Um, for actual envelope addressing, I recommend if you're doing a centered address, especially I like to make sure that whatever I'm d...

oing is actually laid out in front of me before I do it, because for me, I'm visually, you know, for him. A visual like that I just I need to see it centered in order to ride it centered and some people are very good with that special situation where they could just figure it out and I am not one of those people so I tend to look at it first on paper so uh just for this purpose I'm just going to write it down just so I can see it so we're gonna say mr and mrs john it's good listening what's it really you are you know why? All right, we're going to just pretend that he is at five sixteen I recall it king street I'm just making up a fake address because nobody wants their real information on this so uh in san francisco california nine for one o nine I don't think that's really address anyway so you can see that obviously this is our longest line this is their second longest line um so we're going to want to just obviously this is going to get bumped over a little bit in relationship to this line this is going to get bumped over even more um you can also and this line here and bring your zip code down here maybe I'll do in the second one but for this point for this one I'm just going to use it on the same uh city state line so first three writers see professed yeah this is john here it's probably more space if the five sixteen comes in a little bit and so what do you by doing this what exactly are you trying to figure out with in terms of spacing? I'm just trying to figure how to center it and I'm only doing this for this purpose because I don't have anything else to j judge off of it so I mean I could've brought print out that I didn't but you know like what I'm doing like a bunch of envelopes I will actually have the printout all centered and formatted and ready to go so I'm not actually going to sit here and write every single address before a telegraph it is going to be printed out just like it should be you know, space just like it should be all of like the streets and the cities on the states they're all spelled out there no abbreviations and like, you know what I'm doing this for formal wedding invitation so thiss for me is just to make sure that I center it right now um so now that I've got that figured out I can actually take that to the envelope um and when you're doing envelopes there are definitely some rules you wantto follow and a lot of it applies teo you know it it's basically like how is the post office going to read this there's you really should make sure your zip code is legend ble because that's the first thing that the machine raises the zip code um things like if you're using if there's like an apartment number apparently if you write and o which is my personal favorite way to do it they might mistake it for north so that's a real bummer for me I just love doing the n o instead of like number like that sign or writing out like apartment because it's such a long word but there are things like that's keep in mind and but for the most part you know it's just make sure that your numbers are very distinct so you know like I said like that zip code acing the very critical so if if if there's any sort of confusion as to what number is you know what that number is your male may not get there so just something to keep in mind as you're doing this restrictions by the post office of you know colored thinks that does the does the machine have a hard time reading absolutely absolutely yeah like white on dark they mean they really don't like it but they do get there there's you're also like you're supposed to put your return now just here I'm just I'm not going to produce a wedding invitations it has it there so this is from an old a project that I did so I just brought the leftovers since I like the this particular color envelope but yes, so there's there's a lot of no knows that as a calligrapher I don't abide by but it gets there, it still does but, you know, the zip code is one of the most critical things I think and obviously, like making sure overall it's legible, but, um yeah, gold or white on a dark color is doubling in me in a little bit, I mean, there's no guarantee it's going to get there, but honestly, there's no guarantee it's going to get there if you didn't black on white, so, you know, it's just it's, not something that I would say don't do that, you know, I would just go ahead and do it, and I do it all the time and I love it. So, um, what else I do? If you're sending a lot of stuff internationally, I might want to reconsider like an envelope for that um especially, you know, you just don't know like where it's going to go? So it's just, um you know what? Not where it's going to go? Obviously, if there's an address on it, you know it's going to go, but we're like what the postal regulations are there, so if you're setting into like indonesia, I'm sure that their rules are far different than ours here, so that's just something where I probably wouldn't want to put, like, a batch of fifty invites in the mail when, like twenty of them or twenty five when we're going to go to indonesia, I just think that's a risky move, but for this case, how about it? Why don't I don't maybe, why don't black all that stuff? I just fantastic, I love it. So, um, I think that's pretty much like the most important stuff a ce faras making sure your mail gets there. Um, so let's talk about the envelope layout. Obviously you're going to want to make sure that your envelope for your address is going to be, like, centered or, you know, proportionate on your envelope. Um, and it might take you a practice envelope for two to really figure that out. So for me, I've gone to figure out basically where on these lines I can follow to make sure that my address is in the right spots, and I don't know if you can tell from here, but I have actually marked it. This is a line earth's thickness of the guy chief, that I have used over and over for a lot of projects, and so I basically like, ok, that those three lines work out really well for this size envelope, so like I said, you're probably gonna run through an envelope for two before you, you know, just kind of sit you, like, figure it out when I started big gamble a project, I will actually slide one of these in take my best guess and then do an address and if I'm like, you know what, that needs to be shifted down, maybe like a half centimeter I'll probably just market, you know, again, like my three lines that I want to follow just half centimeter down. Um, and if that still doesn't work, I might do another one, so it does take a couple you might not nail it right off the bat, and it also depends on what stripped you're doing if you do, like, a really tall script, you know, it's going to go up further on the envelope, then, you know, start higher on the envelope, then like a shorter script. So, um, like I said, I just recommend using an envelope or two just to kind of get the feel of the space, um, and it's going to apply length twice, too. So, you know, it's ah, you might have a case where you're using a more of like, a long gated, stripped and on a seven inch envelope bitten, they not be quite long enough for you so you have to adjust your script size for that it was just like well, maybe I have to do it like it's sixty percent of the size I actually wanted to do in the beginning um so it's just it's a matter of just putting it down figuring out your envelope and then adjusting accordingly ok, so don't answer the question, ok? So for this one, I'm just going to start off with these points that I made it probably can't really see him on here, but I can see him so that's a good start this might be too high up, but we'll see and if it's not, then you guys will see what I'm talking about understand start off with black for this one so the arturo and blows there like I said, they're cotton and a sharper pointed um nibble snag on it a little bit more than this uh, nico, gina well, so um well, I'm gonna stick with this name for now and, uh just gonna try toe try to nail this on the first time um, obviously you know where to start with top line and just go from there and so just based on my previous experiment, I think I might be ok starting off of here based on the script that I'm going to d'oh which is not to be elongated so again, this is something that you might want to actually you'll have to experiment with two just to see how it's how always on your envelope so I think I'm just going to stick with copper plate for this one that will do something a bit more fun for the next one so we're gonna go again following these lines is still gonna be that same fifty five degree angle for this um already off to a lenti start and so these cotton envelopes were really, really wonderful, but they d'oh you know, the pope does actually really sort of build up in your envelope quite a bit I mean sorry and you're never quite a bit and if I was doing a really formal envelope I wouldn't do that little and them then I'm just going to use it for now it actually write that out thinking about while you're doing all this like what? How are you? How are you thinking in terms of keeping it, uh keeping it on the lines like, are you thinking about spacing? Are you thinking about the what the where the next line might go? Everything all at the same time? Eso I do and it's a good question I do want to make sure that I'm focusing on the lines and on my spacing you know, just everything that you're going to be thinking you know are putting into practice this whole entire time is just like this is all just in my head trying to focus on it doesn't mean that's all that's in my head because sometimes I might be thinking about what I want for dinner so you know I'm not gonna lie the brain does go where it wants to go but um you know, for the most part it's just like when you get used to doing these things like it doesn't you don't have to think so hard about that it comes little bit more naturally um but when I'm doing it like this is just like I'm just kind of you know you might eyes they're telling my brain you know basically where to go next month and that's still in my hands where to go next so it's just sort of like become intuitive but yes like when you're first starting off an envelope it's just going to be and even when I do like maybe the first couple envelopes like in a project I'm going to be thinking a lot harder about it than I am like my seventieth envelopes so um yes all of the above the spacing the letter forms everything that you know all of those practices that I've been mentioning like need to be considered and obviously I want to sell everything right um so there is that you know it's it's kind of it's one of those things like I do actually kind of juxtapose numbers a lot which drives me nuts because it always happens in sit code it's like now that I'm done I'm like oh good this envelope over with nothing I don't enjoy doing it but you know he's like a little bit of like, oh, I'm at the end now can relax a little bit and it's just like yeah well now it says nine for one nine o instead of o nine and it's just like that's where it always gets me it's like I lose a little of concentration there so that's um that's definitely something like that now that I'm talking and turn right at the same time it's like I'm going to spell king wrong um it's just something you know where it's like you want to make sure that you're just focusing on what you're actually writing to like not just the shapes of it but I think is not the best for this envelope um realizing that now so it's starting to bleed just a little bit into the texture because I don't think you can tell from here but there is a little bit of the texture to this envelope and if I had my other materials with me I might actually want to switch to a black um another type of black ink so it's just that's another thing that you kind of want to experiment with, um on these envelopes like when I do for example like if ever somebody brings like a shimmery envelope to the table I'm like well it's going to take a lot of experimenting with like, that's gonna be a lot of smudging if I use like, you know, like in blue go wash this said there it is go wash no it's squashed so you're just goingto obviously maybe need to experiment with different inks on different papers so this one and maybe it's my new job you know, there's all sorts of factors you have to consider s o this is actually not my deal choice right now of new pink ink and paper combinations, but I'm goingto go out and finish it would you recommend then that wouldn't bleed in that kind of paper? You know, it's this ink might be ok it really might just be my nib looking at a little bit more closely um sticky struggle you know, I've never used that before. Yeah, I haven't, um, it's kind of hard for me to say because I'm like a diehard sumi ink fan or a moon palace seeming fan and I just like I found that it's really great for almost everything so I would absolutely avoid like higgins eternal on this um and anything acrylic, I would definitely avoid that anything waterproof I would avoid but I think this thing is actually doing ok I think it's really more of a situation at this point so you know unfortunately it's just it's just like ok, you know you've got a sort of do an envelope and do this like I said every project do an envelope like oh, that newt didn't work out that well or that ink didn't work out that well or maybe my hand just wasn't working out that well so you know, it's just like not gonna lie that definitely happens and maybe that's what's happening now to but it's just um you know, it practice envelopes are always great just to do this, you know, get like all of this stuff just out of the way and figured out like that way you can figure out how to do the rest of the project easily and neatly and efficiently if I'm using a nib that is snagging all the time and I have to go like, you know, slow down a lot that I'm just going to be spending for over on one hundred envelopes, huh? Almost done do you ever abbreviate the states? Yeah and a more casual sort of mailing absolutely like save the dates, birthday cars anything like that um and I've run out of space on that line so I'm going to put that down here so that's what I mean by figuring out basically what you know how your address is going to fit on that line so I intended to have that zip code follow california versus going on that line down below um didn't work out that way obviously so if I was to redo this envelope you know say my client was like, you know, I really want the zip code on the city state line it's like ok, I will have to adjust but the size of my writing to make sure that that fit on every envelope for this case it's just an example it's ok, we're going to get fired so so we're good I'm not going to redo this one but it's I'm kind of glad in a way it didn't work out just you guys could see what I'm talking about going further to that so if you're ultimately finding in this particular case that you're going to need tio to make that san francisco california line a little bit smaller and you're writing tio a comedy for the zip code how does that also affect the rest of the envelope? Does it mean you're you're condensing all of the script or you just condense in that line no you want to condense the whole thing you don't want to do anything like everything should basically say the same I mean if you're doing something very stylistic that we're like ok, so the top script is, you know, large and um like a little bit more again, it could lose and playful, and then you do it. The rest of it, like in all caps, lettering that that's perfectly fine. But you're not going to want to adjust the same script to be different sizes. So if this size, if this line is to strengthen, the rest of it, should shrink and you might want to shrink down. Your guide sheet is, well, so that you're not making letters that are proportion, you know, disproportionate. So if they're going to be narrower, they're also going to want to be shorter versus just re sizing it in one way. Um, yeah, so consistency in spacing is is very important. Um, so for that's, just black on white, very relatively straightforward.