Assorted fonts designed from actual American and British handwriting
Brian Willson, owner and designer, Three Island Press, Old Fonts
Historical Pen Fonts Collection
“Modeled after actual handwriting from the 1700s and 1800s.” (Image at top is Douglass Pen™, courtesy Brian Willson). See some of Willson’s fonts below.
American Scribe™Abigail Adams™
“‘My Dearest Friend’ is how she began nearly all her letters to her husband, John. I refer, of course, to Abigail Smith Adams, first Second Lady and second First Lady of the United States. Her famous correspondence with John Adams produced nearly 1,200 letters over a span of some 40 years, leaving us with a priceless record of early American life—from household routines to war and politics to expressions of personal worry and devotion. Abigail’s handwriting, while not the most beautiful, is sure and expressive—as befitting her extraordinary sway and intelligence—and carries a genuine flavor of the period. In making the font that bears her name, I focused chiefly on her letters from the 1780s and ’90s, when she’d taken to using a disconnected cursive, which struck me as distinctive and alluring.”
“The Declaration of Independence was authored by Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson’s is not the classic handwriting on the copies familiar to most Americans. That belonged to Timothy Matlack (1736–1826), a Philadelphia brewer and master penman who served with distinction in the Revolution, sat at a court martial of Benedict Arnold, and penned a copies of documents for General George Washington. In 1776, when the Continental Congress ordered the Declaration to be “fairly engrossed on parchment,” the task fell to Matlack, whose script was compact but neat and legible—perfect for the first and most famous of American documents. “
Austin Pen™
“Empresario Stephen F. Austin(1793-1836) is considered by many the “Father of Texas” for leading the first Anglo-American colony into the then-Mexican territory back in the 1820s. A few years later, while on a diplomatic mission to Mexico City, Austin was arrested on suspicion of plotting Texas independence* and imprisoned for virtually all of 1834. During this time he kept a secret diary—much of it written in Spanish. Austin Pen is my interpretation of his scribblings in this miniature prison journal (now in the collection of the wonderful Dolph Briscoe Center for American History). I trust you’ll agree the font is both legible and evocative of commonplace American penmanship of two centuries ago. Austin Pen has regular and bold weights—the latter replicating look of ink-smudged script. “
Douglass Pen™
“Frederick Douglass was born in a slave shack in Talbot County, Maryland, in either 1817 (his guess) or 1818 (a date settled on later by historians). He went on to become a distinguished statesman, orator, and abolitionist leader known for his inspiring speeches and writings in support of social justice. Douglass also had fine penmanship: he wrote swiftly and boldly in a handsome, somewhat condensed cursive.* Douglass Pen is modeled chiefly after one of his written speeches recounting John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.”
Emily Austin™
“An indomitable woman who traveled a lot, Emily Austin (Bryan) Perry was one of the children of Moses Austin, of Austinville, Virginia. Like her famous brother, Stephen F. Austin, she settled in Texas as one of that region’s earliest colonists. In her travels, she wrote many a letter home to her husband—each showing a distinctively compact, legible hand. The challenge for me in designing the face: resisting the temptation to read and re-read her bossy directives and urgent appeals, all packed tightly together on a page.”
Geographica Script
“Time-tested elegance is what you’ll get with Geographica Script, a handwritten typeface steeped in 18th century sophistication. Source materials include the maps of Emanuel Bowen (circa 1694–1767), Geographer to King George II, as well as English and American trade cards from the middle 1700s, including the work of artist and printmaker William Hogarth (1697–1764). A kindred font to our Geographica serif family, Geographica Script is a painstaking replication of the elegant roundhand cursive seen in engravings of the period.”
Houston Pen™
“Early Texas patriots had fascinating penmanship. In researching Texas Hero™ years ago, I had occasion to pore over copies of letters by the likes of Stephen F. Austin, William B. Travis, Thomas J. Rusk, and others. Austin’s hand was pretty messy. Young, brave Travis wrote his last during the Alamo siege. Rusk’s suited my original task. But a couple other styles caught my eye—among them the bold yet graceful strokes of Sam Houston, the Texas hero. Much like the man himself, Houston Pen exudes a certain grandness, openness, clarity, and style.”
Lamar Pen™
“Bold and adventurous but with a hint of culture, Lamar Pen reflects the personality of the man whose handwriting inspired it. Mirabeau B. Lamar was a poet, orator, traveler, military man, and a celebrated Texan of the 1830s and ’40s. Although I’m not a fan of his politics—e.g., as second president of Texas, he made it a priority to expel or exterminate the republic’s Native American tribes, angering first President Sam Houston, a true friend of the natives—the typeface modeled after his stylish hand stands among the most elegant, legible, and evocative of the period. (My source material included scans of Lamar’s travel journals from 1835, courtesy of Rice University.) Lamar Pen has proved a popular complement to our existing font series named for Texas patriots, the others being Texas Hero, Houston Pen, and Emily Austin.”
Military Scribe™
“The 10th Regiment of Foot is a British military unit raised more than three centuries ago—and perhaps most famous in the U.S. for seeing action on American soil during the Revolutionary War in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Military Scribe is modeled after the compact utilitarian script on the mid- to late-1770s muster rolls of the Tenth of Foot. I incorporated the work of at least three separate scribes, averaging their neat old penmanship into a legible disconnected cursive. Perhaps the most versatile of all our vintage handwriting fonts, Military Scribe might faithfully reproduce antique letters, labels, lists—or just about any other kind of document of the period.”
Old Man Eloquent™
“John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, didn’t hit his stride until he’d left that lofty office. It was during his many years in Congress that he assured his legacy—not least because of his long, masterful oratory opposing slavery. His speeches, in fact, won him the nickname “Old Man Eloquent.” So when I decided to simulate Adams’s penmanship in his legendary diary (which he kept for nearly 70 years), it seemed fitting to call the font by that name. I focused on his handwriting from about 1810, when he was Ambassador to Russia, but also consulted pages from later years. Old Man Eloquent is our first historical penmanship font with both regular and bold weights.”
Remsen Script™
“The 1765 Stamp Act ignited in American colonists simmering distrust of a distant British Parliament whose oppressive trade duties they deemed unfair assaults on their rights as English subjects. Before long, of course, this little dustup spawned The Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, and the birth of the U. S. of A.—but before Lexington and Concord, a group of Philadelphia merchants made one last-ditch call for commercial cooperation across the Atlantic. This futile appeal survives to this day on a three-page broadside, finely engrossed by a penman of the period and passed down through the generations of a family named Remsen.
Remsen Script is an interpretation of that penman’s neat, formal cursive—from its broad antique flourishes to its subtle unevenness and gently ragged strokes. Perfect for event announcements, fine product packaging, recreations of historical documents, or anywhere you wish to offer a whiff of a bygone era.”
Schooner Script™
“I happened to mention to the proprietor of an antiques barn near here one day that I’d be interested in any old typewriters she might happen to come across. A conversation ensued, the proprietor withdrew into a back room, and she re-emerged with an old handwritten letter, dated 18 Sept. 1825 and spanning nearly three pages. The letter—penned by Samuel Clarke, a Princeton, Massachusetts, pastor—sought donations for the victims of an accident at sea. I thought his script unique, stylistic, and definitely something worth digitizing. Had to come up with several uppercase letters to round out the set, but the results seem good and proper.”
Texas Hero™
“It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting. Conveniently, my mother was then working at the Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. She made copies of the letters of some famous Texans—Houston, Austin, Travis, Rusk. Thomas J. Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. Released in 1994, Texas Hero is, as far as we know, the first authentic simulation of historical penmanship.”
According to Willson: “I can say that I believe my Texas Hero font (1993) was the first to expressly replicate handwriting from history — that is, simulate actual handwriting (as opposed to neatening it and rendering it perfect). My goal was penmanship, ‘warts and all.'”
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Additional fonts designed from actual handwriting
Vox Populi
Vox Populi was modeled after an early 17th century Latin translation of a Greek epos. It is a cursive typeface with a rough edge to it – not unlike the rather decayed original.
Jane Austen designed by Pia Frauss
Albert Einstein font designed by Harald Geisler
Sigmund Freud typeface designed by Harald Geisler
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crazy diamond design
“a range and authenticity of historical characters included – from the long-s, thorn, yogh and wynne, through a wide range of ligatures and alternative character forms, through to abbreviation marks.”
Bastard Secretary Hand
“The Bastard Secretary Hand represents a variation of the Bastard hand, a reform of the court hand, developed in the early 14th century by the Scriptores Litere Curialis (writers of the court letter) in an attempt to reform the by-now deteriorated standard court hand. The Bastard Secretary variation was so called by 16th century writing masters, and was in use through the late 14th and 15th centuries in England.”
Chancery Hand
“From the end of the fourteenth century, each government department developed its own distinctive hand. One of the most distinctive of these is the Chancery hand, used in the Royal Chancery at Westminster from 1454 for writs, enrolments, patents and engrossing of royal letters.”
Hand of the Court of the Common Pleas and King’s (Queen’s) Bench
“Like the Chancery hand, this was a hand used primarily within the courts of the Common Pleas and King’s Bench for official documents, from the early fifteenth century onwards. However, it came to be used by lawyers and clerks in general for both official and personal materials.”
Formal Text Hand
“In standard use throughout northern Europe from 1200, ‘text’ hands (so called because of the resemblance of a page written in this style to a woven pattern or textus) replaced the thinner, curved cursive hands; they arose from the use of broader pens, producing heavy strokes and acute angles. This is a particularly decorative text hand, dating from the sixteenth century.”
Insular Minuscule
“Insular Minuscule (also known as Anglo-Saxon Minuscule) developed in the eighth century as a less ostentatious successor to insular half-uncial. This development was the particular British response to the Carolingian minuscule emerging in continental Europe. The hand was used for vernacular books between the 8th and 11th centuries, also as glossing (notes) on earlier celtic manuscripts. This typeface is a deliberate and well-formed Anglo-Saxon minuscule of a mostly pointed form, which gives a bold colour; it includes the old English characters of thorn, eth, wynne and historical letter forms such as long-s and long-e.”
Italic Hand
“Developed by the Humanists in the Renaissance as a return to the older Carolingian hands, this italic hand is an inclined, cursive form of the littera antiqua (the basis of modern Roman typefaces today), first used formally in the 1450s in the Papal Chancery. It was first used in England from around 1550, and gradually replaced the Secretary hand as the preferred choice for all purposes.”
Rustic Capitals
“Whilst the origins of Rustic Capitals (Capitales Rusticæ) probably predate Written Square Capitals (Quadrata), both hands were mostly in contemporaneous use from the early centuries A.D.. If used for whole documents then it was usually written without wordspacing or punctuation; by the medieval period, its use was restricted to displayed matter. The subtle, sigmoid curves of the oblique strokes have a more calligraphic appearance than quadrata. Note the letters B and F rise above the line.”
Secretary Hand
“Arising in the early sixteenth century out of the need for a universal hand, to cope with the increase in business and personal correspondence following the Renaissance. The Secretary Hand is developed from the cursive business hands, and was in common use throughout England in the early seventeenth century.”
Uncial
“Uncials originated in the 2nd century along with the codex form of book. It is speculated that they were canonised in the early 4th century when Constantine was Emperor as the principal liturgical book hand for Christian works, replacing quadrata and rustic capitals used in pagan writings. This became their principal use, throughout the 5th to 8th centuries, for entire texts. The word Uncial has been translated as meaning ‘inch high’, but why the script was so called has never been satisfactorily explained.”
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Digital Fonts, articles
Erotica: Award-Winning Spencerian Script
By Paul Shaw | January 2, 2014
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Digital fonts
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Handwriting History 