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The Handwriting of Type Designers
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jul 08, 2008 09:57 PM
from the slow-down-you-move-too-fast dept.
from the slow-down-you-move-too-fast dept.
jamie found this blog post wherein an Australian Web technologist, Cameron Adams, wondered whether the handwriting of his favorite type designers encoded some sort of influence on their designs. So he wrote to them and asked for a sample. The result will make you slow down and appreciate the beauty and the aesthetics of type. Or else it won't.
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I'm facinated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm facinated (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how often these folks write in longhand, and how old they are. I started typing in the seventies, and have noticed that my handwriting hasn't so much changed as lost finesse and regularity as I transitioned to the modern full-time keyboard.
I can't recall the last time I wrote out a full sentence. I probably haven't done more than a dozen in the last ten years. It's just notes and lables now. People born since the Mac probably have vastly fewer pen-miles than I did at 24. That's got to have an effect on how they approach the drawn charater.
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Re:I'm facinated (Score:5, Funny)
Most of my writing was the "I will not {action} in class" variety. I've been typing papers since the Commodore 64 days.....I think my teachers appreciated it.
Layne
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Layne, is that you?! (Score:5, Funny)
Layne, is that you?! It's me, Mrs. Berkshire, your grade 10 teacher! How amazing that we can both be here to reminisce of your brazen school days. I still keep all of my students' detention writings in my desk drawer. Let me write out some of the favorite ones I had you write during your year in my English class.
1. I will not play Dungeons and Dragons in class.
2. I will not scream "Beam me up, Scotty!" in class.
3. I will not program on my abacus in class.
4. I will not hack administration's punch cards to improve my grades in class.
5. I will not debate 86-DOS vs Mac 128k in class.
6. I will not mastur^H^Her math in class.
7. I will not read slashdot in class.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Berkshire
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Re:Layne, is that you?! (Score:4, Funny)
7. I will not read slashdot in class.
Wow, that makes me feel old. I'm not sure CmdrTaco was born when I was in 10th grade...
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Re:I'm facinated (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't recall the last time I wrote out a full sentence. I probably haven't done more than a dozen in the last ten years. It's just notes and lables now.
I like writing letters. When I was young, I'd write letters to my favorite uncle and grandma, and now when I'm older and support two Plan International children, I write letters to those.
:-)
I'm European and have an Indian friend with a 6-year-old. For his birthday, I wrote a letter to the little guy, who was totally amazed that someone would write him a real letter
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps I should switch him to Dvorak before it's too late?
What, and be reported for child abuse?!
Re:I'm facinated (Score:5, Interesting)
was modding but have to post...
"...can be just as "lazy" or sloppy as me."
Seriously?
I thought their writing was gorgeous; compared to my horrible chicken scratches.
Dude, if you want to see sloppy writing, I will send you a sample.
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Re:I'm facinated (Score:5, Funny)
I will send you a piece of paper to sign.
It already has a little writing and some numbers on it, but don't worry about those. Just sign on the line in the bottom right corner.
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I once designed a font... (Score:3, Funny)
Sigh!
Naw, it dosen't (Score:5, Informative)
The last two in TFA do have rather spiffy handwriting, though.
Re:Naw, it dosen't (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I preferred Dino's. Learning multiple scripts is easy, anyway. Just get a fountain pen and go to dover.com if you're interested.
Bah! (Score:2)
Re:Bah! (Score:4, Funny)
I AGREE FULLY. WHO NEEDS LOWERCASE?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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Lost Art (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be an interesting poll:
How many words per day do you write with "pen and paper"? ...) ...)
o) 0
o) 1-5 (passwords on post-it)
o) 6-20 (milk, breat, ramen, condoms, beer,
o) 21-200 (still in school, you insensitive
o) >200 (i do it for a living!)
lsr@#suechtler
Re:Lost Art (Score:5, Funny)
Is that supposed to be "bread" or "breast"?
I ask because it's on the same line as milk, rammin', condoms, and beer, and it could go either way.
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Re:Lost Art (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While I program for a living much of my day is spent writing stuff with pen and paper. A computer simply cannot support the same flow of thoughts as a couple of pieces of paper can. When I'm done sketching out my project I turn to the computer for the actual programming. /so >200 //Also I think it scores a point or two with the boss when you take notes pen and paper wise, he can see that you are actually paying attention while someone staring intensely at his laptop screen could just as well be playing s
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In related news (Score:5, Insightful)
Their hands were actually cut off for their poor and uninspired ripoff of Helvetica.
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Re:In related news (Score:4, Funny)
Helvetica can rot in hell...vetica.
Arial uber alles!
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Re:In related news (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ms-studio.com/articles.html
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it was the end points of all their characters that they lopped off of Helvetica, from perfect 90 and 0 degree angles of the Swiss type to a random assortment of everything in between. It's the cheap and easy way to tell the two apart.
I would be interested to see (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I would be interested to see (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that's interesting. I've been known to do some comic book lettering [profession...erhero.com] from time to time, but my actual handwriting is pretty damn horrible these days. Small, but horrible. The reason is application. I use handwriting to jot down notes, where the primary goal is speed. Studies have found that the slowest known way to write the English language is in block caps, so that's out the window straight away. The overall look of the letters goes downhill from there.
By comparison, writing letters for comic books is really more of a kind of drawing. You have to read the script to know what to write, but when you're making the marks on the paper you're not really thinking about the words at all, just the letterforms (in my experience, anyway -- and that's even when I wrote the script myself).
Even more interesting, my dad was also pretty good at block caps. I used to see his block writing around the house, on moving boxes etc. It was even more precise than mine (I assume because in comics you're trying to convey a little bit of emotion with the letters). His handwriting for notes was legible, but totally different. And my dad was also a doctor. I've seen him write prescriptions. They are illegible, totally illegible. I swear to you it's a code! I bet they write them that way to prevent hypochondriacs and junkies from writing believable fake scrips.
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That was unbelieveably cool (Score:4, Funny)
I've always wished my handwriting didn't suck so hard. Now I feel even worse. Thanks, Slashdot!
Re:That was unbelieveably cool (Score:5, Funny)
No, it was believably cool.
Unbelievably cool would be if it came with a pony.
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Re:That was unbelieveably cool (Score:5, Funny)
Unbelievably cool would be if it came with a pony.
What, you didn't get yours?
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How enlightening (Score:3, Funny)
FTA, it's clear that even a chicken can create good fonts.
Perhaps the writer should have wondered whether the designs of his favorite type designers 'encoded' some sort of influence on their handwriting. Clearly, they do not.
Re:How enlightening (Score:4, Informative)
Nay, he is rather referring to the the common colloquialism of calling bad handwriting "chicken scratch," thus implying that some of those dudes have horrible handwriting, but that didn't stop them from creating beautiful fonts. Indeed, a tool's a tool with art, what matters's in the mind and in the heart, whether with the hand or with the mouse.
By the way, if you explain why you think something needs a citation, or even go a little out of your way to explain how you looked it up on google and couldn't find anything, so you are wondering where he/she came up with that; if you show you went to effort, instead of lazily implying that the gp is wrong, then you will be a lot more likely to get a response, and a lot more worthy of respect.
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I would love to see (Score:5, Funny)
the handwriting of the creators of Wingdings.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Next on /. (Score:3, Funny)
I had no idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I had no idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't there be? It's not like designing a typeface is easy.
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Re:I had no idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Only 52? There are many more than that in a decent set. There are also only a limited number on notes a musician can play (generally speaking), yet people keep coming up with new ways to play them. I'll give you that type is a much more subtle and restricted art form than music, but the same principle still applies. Style and usage also evolves over time and this is reflected in it.
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Re:I had no idea (Score:5, Informative)
You must be new... to typography.
What's surprising is the appearance of an article like this on Slashdot, a site frequented by roughly zero typographers. Not that the lack of typographers is a bad thing, Slashdot is about Free software, bashing Microsoft, and language paradigm flamewars. Hardly this site's target market.
I have more than a passing interest in typography, but trust me, it takes years to learn about this stuff. I would suggest Slashdot leaves type related articles to Typophile [typophile.com], I love typography [ilovetypography.com] and all the others.
Remember that this is not just creating text. It is an intricate art form, dating back thousands of years. If you, or anyone else, wants to educate themselves The Elements of Typographic Style [typebooks.org] is essential reading. One other thing I've found: many typographers (but not type designers so much) are even more pedantic, exacting and pretentious than software engineers, or even grammar Nazis. If you posted the above on the Typophile forums, they'd probably be round your house with pitchforks and torches. :)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One other thing I've found: many typographers (but not type designers so much) are even more [...] pretentious than software engineers
Wow, have you ever done a great job of illustrating that point.
I have more than a passing interest in typography, but trust me, it takes years to learn about this stuff. I would suggest Slashdot leaves type related articles to Typophile.
If you cared a whit about the subject as an art, you'd be happy to have it exposed to more people in such an interesting way. Frankly, I'm happy to have seen a really interesting article without having to risk visiting a site populated by assholes like yourself.
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing a pro typographer could easily see correlation among the examples. Designer-types often express in their handwriting what they desire their overall "vibe" to be. Since typography is abused so much, and there are so many edge cases to look after, it's only natural that the fonts that result look more stilted and less artsy than the handwriting that may have inspired them.
Related principle: Design students learn very early on not to set large bodies of type with decorative fonts.
Skewed sample? (Score:3, Insightful)
It strikes me that English is likely not the first language of many of these typographers, yet all but one provided their sample written in English. I wonder if that unintentionally skewed the samples for the better?
It's been nearly a decade since I've put pen[cil] to paper in another language, but I know that when I was writing French in high school, I did much better at penmanship than when I was taking notes in class or doing other day-to-day writing. It wasn't so much a conscious effort at making my handwriting look better, as it was the natural delay in writing something down slowly as I translated it in my head. I imagine it's a similar principle to forging a signature; you're being very deliberate about what you write, so it tends to come out looking cleaner.
That said, Erik and Dino have really cool handwriting. My own daily jottings typically resemble Goran's - and that's writing in my native language! I could probably qualify to be a doctor based upon my handwriting alone; guess it's a good thing that I type well.
first and last, alpha and omega (Score:5, Informative)
These are the handwriting samples that I like most. For some reason, both of these individuals write their "d" in a single upward sweeping loop, without the subsequent vertical downward stroke--although Dino seems to do this only for the terminal "d."
Erik's sample is interesting to me because of the unconventional ampersand, and how it is clear that he writes the stem of his "i" before dotting it (I do the reverse when I print, which is my regular script, as opposed to writing in full cursive, which I rarely do).
Sebastian's handwriting is vaguely reminiscent of graffiti artists. I like it, in particular, I like the shape of the "a" and the overall crowded, upright feel.
Eduardo's sample makes me think he's either playing a joke, or he's 7 years old. The apostrophe is absolutely bizarre--it is not so much written as it is drawn.
Marian's "crazy backhand" is actually my favorite among her three styles of handwriting, but what is more curious is that she even *has* three clearly distinct styles of script.
Kris's handwriting looks remarkably--in fact, uncannily--similar to the handwriting of my ex-boyfriend, who is German. I wonder if he studied in Germany.
Finally, Dino's sample is really quite beautiful--it has distinctive touches (the "D", "s", and "g" in particular), is calligraphic, and exudes elegance.
The other samples I found mostly unremarkable. Sorry. There are some shared themes between each designer's handwriting and their typefaces, but I think the comparison is tenuous as well as retrospective. If one did not know in advance which writing sample belonged to which typographer, it would not have been at all obvious how to match them up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Erik's sample is interesting to me because of the unconventional ampersand,
That's an ampersand? Looks a lot more like @ to me.
and how it is clear that he writes the stem of his "i" before dotting it
That's common. How do you think they got the phrase, "dotting the i's and crossing the t's"?
Re:Is it really surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it really surprising... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Is it really surprising... (Score:5, Funny)
so, what's the difference between ledgible and artistic?
One of them is a word.
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Re:Is it really surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: the beauty of type (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No Ray Larabie ? (Score:4, Informative)
Larabie and the Erik Spiekermanns of this world are in different leagues.
Most of Larabie's fonts are display fonts, rather than text fonts (i.e., ones that would be used for setting headings or signs, rather than paragraphs of text), and many of them are of a quirky novelty nature. Making a fun-looking display font is one thing; making a typeface that can be used to set large swathes of text, in such a way that the text is readable for long periods of time, is more difficult. Entire books have been written on the art of typography, on serifs and optical weights, the perceptual psychology of reading text and the tricks of the great typefaces of the past. As such, it takes far more accomplishment and mastery of typography to make one good display font that gets accepted for use in print than it does to make three hundred nifty-looking display fonts.
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