So you'd like to honor someone you admire or love with a tattoo, but how to do it? Tattooing the name of a spouse is one of the most notoriously "cursed" tattoo decisions, famously going bad more times than not. And what if you want to make the tattoo relevant for many people? What if you want something small and private instead of a large name emblazoned across your body? This is where a design based on or created from initials or a monogram may be just the tattoo solution you are seeking.

A monogram is when one or more letters are combined to make a symbol. Most people are familiar with having towels or luggage marked with initials. The same concept can work for a tattoo design. You can use a single letter, the first letters of a first and last name, or go for the traditional design of first letter of first, middle and last name. Most often monograms have the first letter of the last name placed in the center in a slightly larger size, but really the placement and styling is entirely up to what you design with your tattooist.

Getting initials tattooed offers lots of options. Sizing can be just about anything you wish as long as it's not so small that it's going to become an unreadable blur over time. Picking a font also offers of lot of variation. There are hundreds of web sites that offer free fonts where you may find it's easy to lose hours looking. Many of those sites also offer options to test the font or write short phrases to see how it looks and this will let you create your own design and then make a screenshot or printout that you can take to your tattoo artist.

The monogram doesn't just have to be for a single person. You can take the letters of various family members or friends and combine them to make a unique design. A flowing, abstract script will result in a more private and cryptic design whose meaning is known only to you. If you want to make the tattoo more obvious, a simple, bold text can literally spell it out for anyone to read.

Monograms combine nicely with other tattoos. If you have several pieces and have a blank spot, it's easy to modify a monogram to fit into the open area. And you can easily add color, small images or graphic highlights to script tattoos to bring more meaning and symbolism.