Slashdot Mirror
The Handwriting of Type Designers
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.
I'm always criticized for my sloppy handwriting, and it's refreshing to see that the experts in the field of readable, beautiful type can be just as "lazy" or sloppy as me.
The only one of those whose writing resembles one of their fonts is Mark Simonson with his "felt tip roman" font.
The last two in TFA do have rather spiffy handwriting, though.
All caps block lettering FTW!
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
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
The author of that article neglected to mention that the creators of Arial, having devised a font so perfect they chopped their own hands off because they knew their work could never be surpassed.
Not really, think of it this way, if you are going to be making letters that will be reproduced thousands and millions of times, you are going to try to make each one look the best, if you are writing a card, it doesn't really matter as long as it is somewhat readable.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
a similar article with comic book letterers.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I've always wished my handwriting didn't suck so hard. Now I feel even worse. Thanks, Slashdot!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
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.
the handwriting of the creators of Wingdings.
The Phrenology of Plastic Surgeons.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
that there are so many people who are renowned for creating text... and that someone would have a "favorite." Incredible.
I disagree. I found their writing really beautiful. Handwriting in the end, isn't different from drawing (nor drawing is much different from handwriting) so you have to look at them artistically and study their lines, shapes and relationships like you would do with a free hand sketch. Apart from revealing their personality (as for any of us), handwriting is the best proof that everyone has an artist inside of us. And an art critic, as well. :)
That's true, of course, but I would think that people who do this type of thing would have excellent handwriting (and some of them do), just as I'd expect a graphic artist to be able to draw freehand. Then again, someone might be more comfortable with a tablet and Gimp than pen and paper; the same principle could be at work here. Ah, well, just another preconceived notion shot partially to hell.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
>Anyone else notice that the typographers who either reside in the US or have resided in the US their writing is much more legible?
I did... the rest are writing in their second or third language. How's your penmanship in your second language?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For some of them it's obvious why they became typographers. No one was able to decipher their handwriting, so they just had to come up with an alternative...
so, what's the difference between ledgible and artistic? Not all of the typefaces we use are necessarily ledgible. At first I thought the first sample was pretty bad, but after looking at it, I noticed that his lettering was consistent. Whether I thought it was appealing or not does not matter. I have in the past worked on my signature, simply to make it stand out a bit and more distinct. Point? The point is, I can't pen my name with the consistency that Erik Spiekerman spells "handwriting". He has found what works best for him and applies it *every* time he writes, me I still can't decide how big of a loop to make for the letter "e".
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
There are some interesting correlations there, comparing relative x-height and the feel of the typography from person to person. I'm not a professional typographer, but I teach basic typography units as part of computer graphics courses.
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.
The native alphabet of every typographer on that page uses roman letters. There is no difference between their written language and our written language except spelling, accent marks, and perhaps a few ligatures.
I fail to see how the quality of one's handwriting is important. The point of day-to-day writing is to write something down that is legible, and can be easily re-assimilated when necessary.
People who spend more than 1/4 of a second per letter aren't handwriting; they're either being artistic, or trying to boost pride through snobbery. I can "handwrite" much nicer than my everyday writing, but why would I waste 3 minutes writing a single sentence just to make sure each letter is curved?
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.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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
Sigh!
The result will make you slow down and appreciate the beauty and the aesthetics of type. Or else it won't.
Ah, you can't go wrong with a tautology. Unless you can.
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.
You have no idea what you're talking about. As evidenced by your reference to "creative use of whitespace" and "web sidebars" (?!). Those things have exactly nothing to do with typography, they're hallmarks of the sorts of wankers who have "Web Designer" on their business cards. Actual good typography is very difficult to execute and ultimately invisible. No, you don't simply want the "maximum amount of words on a page," because that would be utterly fucking illegible. Packing those words in to a compact yet legible form is where the unappreciated artistry of typography does its invisible thing. Those pages of miniscule stock quotes in the newspaper? Why you can read them without going blind? That's because of typography.
so, what's the difference between ledgible and artistic?
One of them is a word.
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.
You can see a sample of his handwriting in an interview he did with Free Software Magazine in 2005: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/interview_knuth
Perhaps I should switch him to Dvorak before it's too late?
What, and be reported for child abuse?!