Design reading YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD, with each letter formed from bones such as ribs, vertebrae and a skull, in white on a black background.

You're Already Dead bone lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A graphic design spelling YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD in capital letters, each formed from bone shapes including a ribcage, vertebrae, a pelvis-like curve and a skull. The bones are drawn in off-white linework and light shading against a dark textured background. The lines are arranged in three tidy rows, centred and evenly spaced.

Lettering Bone Skeleton Ribcage Spine Skull Lettering Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bone man sent the letters up the lane in a fishbox packed with straw, and Walter Greaves had to lay them out on the workbench before he could make sense of the order. Y, O, U, apostrophe, R, E. Someone had taken trouble over the ribs. He counted the vertebrae twice because the invoice said forty-two, and he did not trust a man who sold dead things by the dozen.

Keep reading

Mrs Hollis wanted the board for the lychgate of St Oswin's by Friday. She stood in his doorway with her gloves still on, watching the dust from the old coach road settle on the skull of the final D. 'It's a warning,' she said. 'For the living, Mr Greaves. People stroll past that gate as if they've got all the time in the world.'

He painted the ground black, the colour of wet slate, and set each bone where the paper template told him to. The lettering took four days. On the third night the wind came off the moor and rattled the shop sign, and he caught himself talking to the pelvis that curled the second D, as though it might answer back.

On Friday Mrs Hollis came to collect it, read it once, and laughed so hard she had to sit on the step. 'Oh, Walter. I meant to say it to my brother-in-law, not the churchyard.' She tapped the glass. 'Still, you've made it beautifully. Put it up anyway. He's the one who never stops talking.' Walter wrapped the board in sacking, carried it up the lane, and hung it over the gate, where the last of the sun caught the white bones and made them look, for once, like they belonged there.