This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
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Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#2the link to the experiment: http://theuniversaltypeface.com/home - a download apparently follows in august
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#3Does anyone know what kind of algorithm they'd be using to "average" all of the letters? If you look at the I's and J's, you can see that though some people use horizontal crosses, they aren't included in the universal letter. Anyone have any insight here?
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#4Weirdly, it's only capitals, no numbers or punctuation. Not sure what I would do with such a typeface! Also it's more like an average of the world's finger-painting styles, since you have to draw the letters super big and on a touchscreen. Still, everyone does have their own style, and there are some interesting stats on the "left" of that nearly un-navigable website, letter averages by country or profession and such.
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#5It uses your finger though, not the right source material.
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#6Weirdly, it's only capitals, no numbers or punctuation. Not sure what I would do with such a typeface! Also it's more like an average of the world's finger-painting styles, since you have to draw the letters super big and on a touchscreen. Still, everyone does have their own style, and there are some interesting stats on the "left" of that nearly un-navigable website, letter averages by country or profession and such…
Limited typefaces can still be useful for logos or titles/headers. For instance, it's very common for stylized Japanese typefaces to only support a small fraction of common characters.
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#7With my own handwriting, once described in school as "bovine diarrhea committed to paper" (a rough translation) I have come to admire people's handwriting in a sort of wistful way.
I think a discussion around this post would be incomplete without reference to the font made from Dijkstra's beautiful and clear hand writing. http://lucacardelli.name/indexartifacts.html (search for Dijkstra) or if you prefer a pdf preview http://lucacardelli.name/Artifacts/Fonts/Dijkstra.pdf
I wonder if Ramanujam's handwriting has received similar treatment.
A sidenote: while searching for Dijkstra's font on Google had an experience that had but disappeared from my memory. It has been a while since I have been in a situation where I am unable to google to the the page that I know exists on the web. This is the second time in the week that I felt this, something afoot ? In any case wanted to find the letter to Dijkstra asking for permission to use his handwriting for a font.
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#8Why would you have an image with "The quick brown fox" without "jumps over the lazy dog"? The whole point of the phrase is to use every letter.
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#9Like my buddy Leo, I write in mirror image. Should I...
Re: This Typeface’s Letters Are the Average of the World’s Handwriting
#10Weirdly, it's only capitals, no numbers or punctuation. Not sure what I would do with such a typeface! Also it's more like an average of the world's finger-painting styles, since you have to draw the letters super big and on a touchscreen. Still, everyone does have their own style, and there are some interesting stats on the "left" of that nearly un-navigable website, letter averages by country or profession and such…
Limited typefaces can still be useful for logos or titles/headers. For instance, it's very common for stylized Japanese typefaces to only support a small fraction of common characters.
Certainly true. In this case it seems like since it's meant to be an "everyman" font it would be more useful to have it be in lowercase too, and include numerals etc.
I'm guessing they decided writing 26 letters was about the limit of the average attention span online - having to do it twice, along with 0-9 and a basket full of symbols probably would result in lots of incomplete forms.