ZINGTOBER 01 - MUSTACHE Typography with ERMO

Hey everyone, welcome back to my post!
Today is HIVE POWER UP Day, and at the same time, I’m also joining INKTOBER 2025 hosted by @holozing.

These past few weeks I’ve been having fun playing around with letters, so when this challenge popped up, it felt like the perfect match. You can check out all the details here: ZINGTOBER2025

The theme for day one is Mustache. And my “experiment victim” this time is ERMO, one of the newest characters that I think is perfect to explore.

As usual, I started by sketching out some guide lines as the base.

Then, I used CorelDraw 2018’s Effects > Envelope feature to shape the text exactly the way I wanted.

The first word I transformed into feather-like shapes around Ermo’s neck.

Using the same technique, I kept arranging the words to follow the outlines I had prepared earlier. To make it easier, I gave each word a different color so I could identify and adjust them more quickly.

Before I knew it, three hours had already passed. The toughest part turned out to be the face. Since the theme was mustache, I placed that word in just the right spot.

Once everything was in place, it was time to delete the guide lines. The result was just the words forming Ermo’s character.

Since the challenge was black and white only, I used a black background and adjusted the colors according to the rules.

When it looked done, I still noticed a few overlapping lines and nodes, so I cleaned them up for a neater look.

And there it was: a black-and-white version of Ermo with his signature mustache. I added a bit of gray in certain areas to make the character pop more.

Just for fun, I also made a two-color version with a simple 3D effect—a thin white shadow that gave it a little extra twist.

Here’s the result:

• With the shadow version

• With the black-and-white version

So, what do you think? Hopefully Ermo with his mustache can bring a smile to your face. That’s it for my first ZINGTOBER entry. See you again in the next post!