Calligraphy and Lettering Tips – Ligatures

This post is from the Newsletter Archives (originally published on February 23, 2024) and we’ll be going over one of my favorite calligraphy/lettering concepts – ligatures!

Learning about Ligatures

Today let’s chat about aftafflifi.

And yes, I made up that word 😉, but for a good reason.

Today we’re actually going to talk about the incredibly fun topic of ligatures and I made up the word “aftafflifi” to demonstrate what ligatures are and how fun they can be to play with!

But first, let’s start with the formal definition:

Ligature: A character consisting of two or more joined letters.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, you might be surprised at how creatively this concept can be applied.

We’re going start in a spot you might not be expecting – computer fonts, because these wonderful letter combos are embedded all over the place in font you probably use all the time (sometimes you just need special software get them to show up, like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign).

So, let’s jump back to my fun made-up word “aftafflifi” and type it out normally…

Everything looks pretty normal here, but when I click the option to show ligatures in a program that supports this font feature, here’s what happens…

Notice some differences?

Let’s highlight what’s changed…

Plus, there’s something particularly interesting here.

Like we saw in the definition, ligatures don’t just show up with letter pairs but can involve multiple letters like you can see with the “ffl” above

Pretty interesting right?

Here’s an example from another, similar-style font…

You might be thinking at this point – ok, it looks like there are definitely some clear rules to this concept since both of these fonts applied the ligatures quite consistently…

Well, take a look at this example…

Interesting right? Although there are similarities, the second two ligatures are definitely different – the crossbar for the “ffl” ligature extends all the way to the “l” in this case, and the “fi” ligature at the end retains the dot on the “i”

How wonderful – this means that this is a creative decision!

We love getting to play and make creative decisions around here, right? 😁

What’s even more fantastic is that these letter combinations aren’t the only ones and they differ with each font (quick note that not all fonts include ligatures, but many do)

If you start exploring fonts in this way, you’ll find lots of really fun and interesting combinations…

Now, you might be wondering why I’m writing about a typography concept when we’re usually more focused on calligraphy (I use that word usually pretty lightly there since I do enjoy lots of calligratangents)…

1. They are fun, right? I genuinely think it’s neat to explore these things – they can be great inspiration for new ideas to try…

and…

If you’re thinking that this must be some relatively modern innovation that our fantastic font founding friends fabricated, may I present this image from a manuscript written centuries ago:

I’m not fluent in Latin, but based on my calligraresearch this word is “altitudines” which translates to “heights”.

See how the “ti” and “tu” are connected into ligatures?

There are ligatures all over medieval manuscripts – I ran into them time and time again when I was building the manuscript library for the Masterclass last December.

Here are a few more examples…

(that last one also includes a “long s” like we talked about in a newsletter last fall!).

To wrap up our intro into learning the lovely language of ligatures today, a fun practice idea that you can add to your practice time – try spending time making up ligatures of your own!

You have a few ideas to jump-start your play here, but I’d be super curious to hear and see how many different lovely ligatures you can come up with!

(PS – If you’re curious, in programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, this is the option to look for (the icon itself is a ligature!). Many of the icons in this row will trigger alternate letters and features if the font you’re using supports them)

A Note from the Archives

This post originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, which is full of free resources, calligraphy information, tips, tricks, and more. 

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