Modern Day Snail Mail

Remember when Harry Potter’s wand had to choose him? Welp, I found a calligraphy pen that “chose me.”



The other day, I resurrected my dad's old calligraphy pen. Calligraphy is decorative handwriting or handwritten lettering. Basically, calligraphy is something that people just don't get enough of today, literally.



Once I received this pen, I examined the black barrel that held the ink and disassembled the pen, pretended to be a mad scientist (duh!) with my ink dropper as I watched the ink fall like teardrops into the pen, and finally, I assembled my shiny new toy. I immediately took the pen out for a test run and quickly discovered the magic of the golden tip of the pen. My dad informed me that the tip of the pen was made from gold and that gold is softer than other less precious metals. In other words, I had a precious writing utensil—and that it was. But really, the softer metal meant that the tip of the pen has a greater range for line thickness. The harder you press down on the pen's nib, the thicker the line. When less pressure is given, the thinner the line. I quickly began creating illustrious letterforms with the perfect balance of thick and thin strokes. I wrote out the alphabet, popular phrases, curse words (that looked beautiful might I add), and then I sent doodle-filled text messages to a couple of my design-y friends notifying them about the magic of this pen.



Basically, I won the lottery in terms of art supplies.



After texting some doodles, I decided to send handwritten messages to people for that next week. I wanted to create my own modern day version of “snail-mail.” My rules for this type experiment were simple: create handwritten text messages for 7 days, i.e. no using the keyboard on my phone to send a message. I wrote out my message on paper and then I snapped a photo to send as a text message.