I’ve always been fascinated by typography. It could be due to several crushes on graphic designers over the years, one of whom thought that the beauty of positive and negative space in type layouts was more important than the words themselves. Idiot. However, great typography can add meaning to the words in a way found only in handwritten screeds. My former collaborators Studio 8 are a great example of meaningful typography (they’ve now disbanded, but check out founder Matt Willey’s work on Port Magazine – proper ace).
But now it seems that typography is getting the personal, meaningful touch of handwriting, thanks to Central St Martin’s graduate Shiho Yokoyama, who has created a typeface based on her family’s handwriting. Now, anyone could get their handwriting turned into a font by Yokoyama, as part of the launch of Philip Hensher’s lovely new book The Missing Ink, about the “rise and slow death of the art of handwriting, and why it still matters”. All you have to do to enter is tweet a picture of your handwriting @panmacmillan with the hashtag #missingink, and Yokohama will create a font for you. I won’t be entering the competition, as my handwriting is already not dissimilar to Comic Sans (and nobody needs any more of that), but for those with lovely penmanship, it’s a beautiful idea…
How Things Are Done 