With the exception of people with disabilities pretty much everybody in the developed world is expected to know how to read and write from an early age on. While school systems are failing an increasing number of kids in helping them to acquire even these very modest skills, the average student of type design and typography finds their own penmanship a very good starting point for their explorations. The problem here is that we are usually not very conscious of the letterforms that we use when writing in everyday life. One reason is that writing instructions in elementary school is mostly rudimentary at best and abandons the pupil after a year or two expecting them to embark upon a lifetime of writing equipped with a very basic set of skills.

If you think of typography as writing with pre-manufactured letterforms and consider the history of typesetting and printing as an industrialization of the medieval scribe's work it is easy to see how the practice of writing with period writing tools can inform the designers understanding of modern type.

The Translation contrast always seems like the right starting point for writing. While the character shapes are harder to grasp in drawing the inherent rules are actually much better exposed than in Expansion and the challenges of writing can be eased by using a calligraphy marker rather then a dip pen. This is a text in progress and here are keywords to discuss at this point:

• start with the letter o
• skeletton circle actual form football
• isolate parts contained in o -> Letter Model
• build a
• build i
• draw serifs
• build n
• build e upside down a
• three things to keep in mind for a good g
• draw a j, bending the rules of the Letter Model
• bend the same rules for a good f

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The pointed dip pen glides over the paper without effort and the line thickness transitions from thin to thick with subtle changes of pressure. The point of the pen is so narrow that it allows to be pulled or even pushed over the paper and invites playful, looping, round shapes. To get acquainted with this writing tool it is a good idea to just spend a while fooling around and filling a page with doodles and aimless scribbles. Try to find out what the widest and the thinnest line is that the pen can create. Writing with the pointed nib dip pen is an awesome experience that has a real pay-off: the character of the writing tool and the shapes it seems to enjoy creating are so typical that a whole class of typefaces comes into focus instantly. Typefaces like Bodoni or Didot can be written right out of the pen.

The x-height is really determining the amount of contrast, i.e. depending on its flexibility and ability to maintain ink flow every nib has a thinnest and a thickest line it can create. So the smaller you write the bigger the difference between thick and thin will be. This is why the guideline sheet bares only a baseline. A good length of ascender and descender would be about a quarter shorter than the x-height. This ratio is of course just a good starting point and is completely open to the designers choice. The development of expansion type faces happened historically after that of the translation type faces. The way letter forms and proportions correspond is clearly adopted from the translation letter model. It seems as if this were more due to aesthetic habits, than that the writing tool would have dictated it. This is a text in progress and here are keywords to discuss at this point:

• start with o
• build a and watch how enclosed the counters are.
• tear drop terminal, increased pressure vs. dumpling
• write i, it is mere hairlines and stem
• serifs are mere hairlines, the transition of contrast is abrupt and happens between stem and serif.
• write n
• observe how transition of contrast is condensed into tiny space (compare with transitional typefaces)
• build e compare with upside down a
• three things to keep in mind for a good g
• serifs revisited: hairline on stem but receive stress when atached to hairline in k, v, w x and z.

Please write to point out missing topics.

This is a text in progress and here are keywords to discuss at this point:

• start with a
• The italic construction keeps the upstroke on the paper
• hot iron counter
• curve condensed in corner

Please write me an email to point out missing topics.

This is a text in progress and here are keywords to discuss at this point:

• start with n
• The italic construction keeps the upstroke on the paper
• write a
• round counter

Please write me an email to point out missing topics.