Guidelines with DrawBot

I started doing calligraphy and lettering a couple years ago after I received The ABC of Custom Lettering by Ivan Castro for Christmas. I practice a lot. Although, not so much in the warmer months because I spend a most of my free time riding motorbikes. Now that there’s ice on the roads I’ll spend some of that time doing lettering and calligraphy. The rest will be spent on the endless, and sometimes overwhelming, task of learning and keeping up with web development.

One thing that’s helpful is having a guidelines sheet under the paper I’m writing or drawing on. Making guidelines sheets isn’t hard, but it is time consuming. I need different ones depending on what scale, nib width, paper size, or slant I want to use. I used to make them in Illustrator, but that didn’t save much time. I tried some online generators but the output had too much cruft and I’m picky. They also took a long time to generate. So, I made my own guideline maker using DrawBot. It’s fast and simple. The user interface needs some work.

I love DrawBot. It’s simple, yet powerful. I didn’t know anything about Python beyond writing “Hello, World” in the early ’00s. Now, I know enough to make things that help me be more productive. Not only in DrawBot. I’ve made things in Python to calculate the winners of contests, tally the results of a pet supply drive, batch resize images, and more. I really like Python. I wish I could use it more for my job, but JavaScript is the language of the web. There’s nothing wrong with JavaScript. I’m starting to like it a lot more lately, but my brain prefers Python.

If you or a loved one are interested in learning to use DrawBot and Python, Python for designers is a great place to start. There’s also a good DrawBot tutorial on Adafruit by Andy Clymer.

I also wrote a DrawBot script for calculating the Natural Layout Formula from Mastering Layout: Mike Stevens on the Art of Eye Appeal. I may never use this but I got idea of doing it stuck in my head so I had to make it. That is also on GitHub.