No more cracked letters! If you’ve ever tried to make your own stained glass designs from scratch, then you know about disappointment. So, leaning on the experience of others can help (a lot). Yet, although artists have been including text in their visual works since Cubism (at least), it’s really exploded in the postmodern period — not to mention for use in signage and such.

But I haven’t been able to find many examples of lettering that I could actually use. So that’s where this book comes in. It includes a complete alphabet template — a sans serif with slanted bars/crossbars — which could be adapted for use in a wide variety of ways. Plus, there are decorative layouts for settings/scenes which include related text, all in various decorative typefaces. These include sayings like: Good Times, Irish Pub, Aloha, Welcome To Paradise, Dream Big, Sail Away, Lucky, Peace, Free as a Bird, Nature Calling, Be Fearless, Birds of a Feather, Carpe Diem, Tasting Room, and many more.

The entire templates are entirely professional and would work in a variety of settings. For example, “Rock Star” features a star, within a circle, with angel/bird wings extending out from the sides, with ROCK above and STAR below, with the crossbar on the T turning into an arrow, pointing right. Very nice designs and it’s so helpful to be able to go into it with some additional faith that my finished design won’t crack by the time it’s delivered. Just looking over the designs themselves — for inspiration, and seeing what works — is well worth the price of the book!