I constructed my fonts with a handwriting-to-font app (InstaFONTmaker) on my Samsung Note 2014 edition 10.1″ tablet (basically it’s the same principle as MyScriptFont.com but without the scanning step). The idea is that my tablet’s stylus, specifically designed and optimized for the Samsung Note tablet and phone series, is meant to allow you to handwrite digitally with great accuracy, and I thought this week’s ‘signment would be a good opportunity to test out its capabilities. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was what the experiment revealed about how nuanced handwriting truly is – that while many fonts in the digital era mimic handwritten letters, the actual embodied process of handwriting is more dynamic than it might initially seem. Here are a few iterations of the Riah font I came up with, and some brief reflections on what each iteration of the experiment revealed.

These are not groundbreaking realizations. They do, however, offer an image of whatDrucker means when she suggests that “[c]learly the technology of production and the frameworks of conception both contribute to our sense of what a letter is… The limit of what a letter can be is always a product of the exchange between material and ideational possibilities. Sometimes technology leads, sometimes not” (Drucker, 85). When it comes to the nuances of handwritten language, the idea embodied in the written gesture, appears in the interconnectedness of letters – in the loops and sinuous lines that carry the word forward. It is not that these things cannot be replicated by technology, but that it this is, perhaps, not a place where the technology leads. The font, as such, takes the body out. 

Just as a final point of reference, here is a screenshot of the notes I took during comp reading group on my tablet – while closer to my pen-and-paper handwriting, this isn’t quite it, either… though I hope you see my point.