9th Grade — Typography Deep-Dive: Hand-Lettering & Poster Design

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Write your first name in bubble letters. Now write it again trying to make it look "loud" or "exciting." What did you change?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we use hand-lettering and typography together to design a complete poster?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Apply typography vocabulary (typeface, kerning, leading, serif/sans-serif) to a real hand-lettered composition.
Design a small poster combining hand-lettering with at least 2 elements/principles from Unit 3.
Explain the design choices behind their lettering style.

🧰 What You'll Need

Large paper
Markers, pencils, rulers
Reference alphabet/lettering-style sheets

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: Lettering Styles

Do Now (5 min, above).
Mini-lesson (12 min): review typography vocabulary and introduce display-lettering styles (bubble, block, script-inspired).
Guided practice (10 min): trace/practice 2 lettering styles together as a class.
Independent practice (15 min): practice your own name in 3 different lettering styles.
Share (3 min).

Day 2: Building the Poster

Do Now (5 min): sketch a 1-sentence message you want your poster to communicate.
Mini-lesson (5 min): review how contrast, hierarchy, and alignment apply to posters.
Independent build (30 min): design a small poster combining hand-lettering with at least 2 elements/principles from Unit 3.
Gallery share (5 min).

🖨️ Print Your Handout

Word, picture, and definition for today's vocabulary, plus a place to write and draw. Available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese.

Day 1: EN · ES · FR · AR · ZH
Day 2: EN · ES · FR · AR · ZH

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

Day 1

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

Day 2

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Display Lettering: Large, expressive lettering meant to grab attention, often used for headlines or posters.
Poster: A large-format printed design meant to communicate one message quickly from a distance.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Poster scored with a rubric: legible display lettering, at least 2 elements/principles applied, clear message.

Exit Ticket: Name one design choice in your poster and explain why you made it.

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📤 How You Submit This — For Credit

Your physical projects don't stay in the classroom past the day you finish them -- you're responsible for your own completed work, the same way you'd be responsible for it in any job. The one exception is your class notebook: it has its own designated spot in the room (ask your teacher exactly where), and most students leave it there day to day -- but it's yours, so if you'd rather keep it with you or bring it home to study from, that's your call. Either way, always know where your own notebook actually is. Before a finished physical piece leaves your hands for good: ask your teacher for one of the classroom cameras, photograph your finished (or in-progress) work, then plug that camera's SD card into a classroom computer and upload the photo into your portfolio folder. That uploaded photo, with a short caption, IS your submission for credit -- the photo is what gets kept and graded, not the physical piece.

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), photograph or save your best finished or in-progress piece from that week into your portfolio folder (a physical folder for now, or a Google Drive folder once one is set up) with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, and one skill it shows. In Grade 10 this becomes your Google Sites portfolio -- keep adding to it weekly from here on so you're not trying to reconstruct a whole semester of work at the end.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Typography Deep-Dive: Hand-Lettering & Poster Design.” This project asked: “How do we use hand-lettering and typography together to design a complete poster?” I used Display Lettering by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry

🔗 Want to Learn More?

Google Fonts

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same craft ELA puts into hand-annotating a favorite quote or poem for a class project.

Career Connection: Hand-lettering is a real, marketable skill inside Illustration and Fashion Design branding work.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Hand-letter a favorite quote from a book you're reading in English class into a full poster-ready piece. Start here: pick a quote under twelve words so it's actually legible at poster size, and thumbnail three different lettering styles in pencil first.
Design event signage (a welcome sign, directional signs) for a real school event using only hand-lettering, no digital type. Start here: list every sign the event actually needs — welcome, restrooms, directions — before you hand-letter a single one.