Being a lazy programmer I decided that the next project that I can have fun with can be creating your own handwriting typeface and just type in your handwriting using a keyboard. So I picked up the book “Thinking with Type” and started working on an app which allows the user to send messages in their handwriting. The app is chugging along slowly but I know a lot more about typefaces than I used to and the above mentioned book has been invaluable. All this preface brings me to this post. I thought it would be fun to analyse my own pathetic handwriting from the point of view of a designer and actually point out why it sucks. So here goes.

THE BASICS

Keeping it simple lets define the basics and ponder how I can improve upon them.

This is the “main” line on which all the text rests. Ideally it would be used for alignment of one letter to the next. Clearly as we can see from the picture I do not understand the concept of baseline with some ( most ? ) of the characters hovering over it. Does not make for a pretty sight.

This is the height from the baseline to the top of the lowercase characters. From the looks of it, x-height may look like half of the Cap Height ( which we will get to in a second) but that varies with each “typeface” ( typeface is the style of the characters, font is the medium through which it is delivered ) and significantly alter the appearance of the type. Due to my already discussed deviance from the baseline the x-height of my characters is all over the place.

The part of some characters that dangles from the baseline constitutes the descender and its length is the descender height. Looking at my handwriting the length of my descenders seems pretty consistent but their placement not so much.