Lettering

On YokoFolio, pick the style Lettering and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. Lettering is judged like typography: look at how even the baseline is, the spacing between letters, the balance of thicks and thins, and whether the counters — the openings inside the letters — stay properly open. Check that the portfolio shows plenty of the kind of lettering you want, whether gothic, script or block, and that it's done well. Look for healed work: that's where you see whether the text stayed readable or closed up. Ask the artist whether they'll draw the letters by hand for your text, and to show it at real size on your skin before starting. For a language or alphabet you don't read, have the text checked by a fluent reader first.

They're mostly hand-drawn scripts rather than installed fonts. Gothic, also called Old English, dense and ornate, comes from medieval letterforms. Script, English or italic, gives flowing, slanted text. Chicano mixes slanted script and shaded capitals, inherited from neighborhood calligraphy. Block and poster lettering serve short, highly readable text, and graffiti letters bring volume and color. The choice depends as much on the length of the text as on taste: a long quote reads better in a simple script or clean capitals, while gothic, with its tight, heavy letters, needs room and suits a single word or a name. If you're unsure, ask the artist to sketch two versions of your text: seeing it drawn decides quickly.

It's lettering where the letters aren't tattooed: the background gets inked, and the areas of skin left bare draw the text. The effect is strong and very graphic, often used inside a band or a solid black fill. Two things to know: it needs generous size and thick letters, because the reserved skin closes up over the years as the black around it spreads, and it's almost impossible to correct afterward. Short words work best; a long phrase in thin letters won't hold. On YokoFolio, when a solid black band carries the piece, it can be filed under Blackwork as well as Lettering. Ask to see healed work before you decide.

Lettering makes words the tattoo, in any alphabet: names, dates and quotes meant to be read, in gothic, script or block letters, often following a line of the body such as a collarbone or the ribs. Sak Yant uses one sacred script, Khom, whose small looping letters are set in rows, circles, grids or spires inside geometric frames, often around protective figures like twin tigers or Hanuman, traditionally tapped by hand and blessed. A phrase in Thai or in any other alphabet, written as a line of text without a yantra, is Lettering. If you want Khom script, look for a Sak Yant artist and ask what the yantra means, rather than using its letters as decoration. If the words themselves are the design, in any alphabet and outside a yantra, it's Lettering.