ON PERSONAL FONTS
author: Rastko Ćirić

TO WRITE IN NIKOLA TESLA’S HANDWRITING
or: Computer Writes by Hand

THE HAND

Either appearance of a typewriter (1829) nor personal computer, a hundred and fifty years later, did push out the use of handwriting. Depersonalized letters of the type-machine conquered offices, desks and working rooms of professional multi-letters writers as journalists and novel authors. However, writing with hand did not remain a privilege of calligraphers and lovers only, so even today it is considered to be impolite if one writes a private letter by typewriter, even if it bears a very ornamental signature.

In the course of writing, transferred through the tips of the fingers, fine personal, intimate, personalized vibrations form special moves into which somehow even the most hidden characteristics of a person can be reflected.

A lot of people compare handwriting with fingerprints - perhaps in some mysterious way the unique ornaments on the fingertips are being transferred over the pen handle to the pen tip. When we write, a pen, as a seismograph needle, creates an infinite motif which changes during one's life, constantly informing about the delicate trembling and quaking within our inner self. The skillful readers of handwriting shapes, the graphologist, are able to - according to the shape of a written ornament, the discontinuation of a sinusoid, the degree of the pen pressing force, the quivering or firmness of a line, the distance of a dot on a small letter “i”, the length of “spears and tails” of small letters, and a lot of other details - define which character line of an amateur calligrapher was inherited and which was provoked by daily events.

MACHINE

In comparison with computer, typewriter today in its use almost shows the human features: some metal matrices - used to print letters - gradually gets damaged, being filled up by the printing ink and ink-tape fiber, so the letters get certain characteristics that some intelligent detective can use to detect if a particular text was written not only using a certain type of a machine, but the particular typewriter. Well, isn't any handwriting more personal, being more different compared with a school example of a unified written script in a primer?

Romantic charm that was still present in a typewriter, completely was destroyed by computer - everyone was able to posess a robot with a thousand handwritings, each tidier than another; every home was ready to become a printing house. Letter types were now called fonts, and computer was able to write even the tidiest possible calligraphic letters from a primer.

HAND-MACHINE

Personal fonts are somewhere in-between. From handwriting examples the most characteristic letters are being chosen and by scanning “digitalized”, therefore, put into a computer. Using the letter-designing computer programs, as is the Fontographer, each letter can be processed and then put into the proper place in the keyboard. That is the beginning of the painstaking adjusting of distances between the letters.

It is easier to perform with printed letters, but with script letters, the connecting line of each written letter have to be tied to the previous and the next one. But, as in a handwriting the letters are not strictly lined, it is necessary to find the positions of a particular letter related to the base line, which defines the specific personal rhythm of the letters. When writing by hand, it is impossible to produce perfectly equal shapes of the letters, but designing a personal font, that feature of a handwriting can be achieved by putting several variants of the same letter to the different keys of the keyboard. That are mainly vocals, as they repeat in a text most frequently.

So, in personal fonts we can notice a small paradox - a “mechanical hand” is able to write free and humanly irregular letters with a “soul”. But, that soul was borrowed by certain human being to the machine, through vibrations of his handwriting.

VLADAN

The first, and for the time being the only personal font I had been creatively involved with, was the font that I made for my dear uncle, Dr Vladan Vučković (1928-2006), engineer, pianist, chess problemist, professor from the School of Electric Engineering in Belgrade, and a longtime director in the “Nikola Tesla” institute in Belgrade. It happened also that he was member of the Honour Council of the Nikola Tesla's anniversary celebration.

In our conversation, he mentioned that it would be interesting if by use of a computer he would be able to write a letter with his own handwriting, and that would diminish the already mentioned “impoliteness” in communication. I agreed to try to make his “personal font” so he wrote, using thin-lined marker, some words that contain all small and capital letters of cyrillic, ten numbers and punctuation marks. It was a great challenge for me, I started to work, and I remember that I finished it rather quickly. My computer noted all the details accurately: I started work on 25th April 1994 at 17:31, and the test version of the Vladan font was “generated” on 29th April 1994 at 18:50.

After that, I wrote to my uncle a funny letter written in his own handwritting which sounded as he was writting to himself, as the handwritting was really his own: starting with "Dear Vladan" and finishing with “Vladan Vučković”, it was sent to him by post.

The contents of the letter was the list of the characters I had still needed to finish the font: some missing punctuation marks, accents, math characters for formulas and a certain Latin letters needed for the Roman numerals. The final version of the VLADAN CYRILLIC was ready for use in May that year.

BUSSINESS

While working on the font, I have found in a computer magazine an advertisement where certain American company offered its services to the readers who wanted to have their personal font. Using special software (copyright 1994) the process was mechanized and fastened, so the customer could receive its font in 2-4 week time, but if an additional payment of 25 dollars was made, it would be delivered in 5 working days only. The total sum was decreased 229.95 to only 99.95 dollars (“plus postal costs”). The next page was reserved for the handwriting specimen: after the signature (which was always considered to be an independent calligraphic totality) followed a form in which one should write with small letters, the carefully chosen words that begin and end with certain letters (in handwriting, the letters in the beginning, in the middle and in the end of a word usually are writen differently), and those words that sound like this: adjoint, bowman, cyclops, doubt, egtype, forgiven, grocery, etc., and specimen of capital letters as well, numbers and punctuation marks. Finally, each customer would suggest the name of the font, not more than seven letters long.

In a such a mechanized way of making a personal font, the customers give only separate letters or words, and the entirety of the written page is not considered. Also lacking is a specimen of handwriting which shows the distance between words, nor between the written rows, both being important information about the entire look of written text. Besides, a lot of customers, consciously or not, make efforts to make their handwritting to be nicer, and by that those less regular but more characteristic details get lost, so in the end one makes somehow sterile version of handwriting which tends to look like "correct" nicely written letters from a primer.

Today, the supply is broadened in many directions. It is possible to order a picture-font containing chosen pictures instead of letters, and one possibility is to have contrasted portraits of the family members. To the customers it is suggested that they should order a new personal font each year, so that development of its handwriting can be followed, which can be interesting if one has enough money to spend. And the more children, the more joy! Personal fonts are reccommended on the Internet, as a special offer, to the handicapped people and people who for any possible reasons are not capable of using hands. In that case font can be reconstructed on the basis of already existent specimen of those persons' handwriting.

LEONARDO, WARHOL AND OTHERS

Certainly, reconstruction based on existing handwriting specimen, such as letters and notes, is possible with famous historical personalities. Among the first personal celebrity fonts, was a font based on the Leonardo da Vinci's handwriting, named “Leonardo Hand”. Of course, as Leonardo wrote his texts in inversed way, as in a mirror, all letters in the font had to be put in proper direction.

Pepe Gimeno, the Spanish font designer, designed in 2001 a personal font inspired with the handwriting of the mother of the excentric pop-art painter Andy Warhol.

Searching through Internet I have found an American company praising their program for creating personal fonts, and as an example they gave a font made after the handwriting of the American president Thomas Jefferson, from the famous Declaration of Independance of 1776, the most important document of the history of the USA. Unfortunately, the result is quite unattractive, because all the characteristic stroke lenghts the computer made equal in a cruel way, so it was given an impression that Jefferson had written the Declaration using modern technical pen. The same company offers somewhat better designed handwritting of Pushkin.

While surfing on the Internet one can surely find more examples of personal fonts, but not those made after handwritings of the Serbian great men. Still, one will yet exist: the font “Tesla” made after the texts from archived handwritings of Nikola Tesla. This project, made in the year of 150 years birth anniversary of this giant of science, was realized in cooperation of the Nikola Tesla Museum with the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade, where on the subject of Lettering, at the Graphic Department, the creating of the new letter types is taught by Professor Olivera Stojadinović. The Tesla font was made by the graduating student Vladimir Popović. The exhibition in which this font, in the Cyrillic and Latin versions, will be presented, will take place in the Museum of Nikola Tesla, on 5th December 2006, on the occasion of the Museum's Day, and after that, we hope, in other cities as well. Within the catalogue, a disc containing this font will be published, and its use will be free. In that way, EVERYBODY will be able to write in Tesla's handwriting. Perhaps that would, in some mysterious feedback, provoke a seed of geniality in some users of this font!? Apart of the website of the Nikola Tesla Museum, this font will be available on the Tipometar site.

Exclusively for this exhibition some pangrams (sentences that contain all letters of the alphabet) to demonstrate all the letters of the Tesla's personal font.

IN CYRILLIC
Никола Тесла (1856–1943), џиновско је име науке: фонт „Тесла”, израђен је по његовим архивским рукописима, а ова реченица склопљена тако да садржи баш сва ћирилична слова!

IN LATIN
Fontom „Tesla”, izrađenom po arhivskim rukopisima našeg genijalnog naučnika Nikole Tesle (1856–1943), složićemo sva slova abecede.

IN ENGLISH
Font "Tesla“ was made by using archive handwritings of Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), and this quiz sentence is using just all the letters of the alphabet, with no exception!

Surely, this font should not be left as the only one of this kind in Serbia. It would be good if some personal fonts of other great personalities of Serbian culture and history could be made. Wouldn't it be nice to have a personal font of Vuk Karadžić, Dositej Obradović, Ivo Andrić, Dušan Radović, Desanka Maksimović and many other important personalities?