“I like your Font!” and other things not to say to a calligrapher….
Joking aside, I’m always delighted to take any compliment and gratefully accept enthusiasm,
so I never turn this one down.
Calligraphy Styles, not Calligraphy Fonts
But, getting technical... it’s not a font! Why do we talk about calligraphy styles and not
calligraphy fonts? My calligraphy clients often ask me to provide examples of my calligraphy
fonts, and sometimes people are surprised I don’t have fifty up my sleeve. I currently have
six calligraphy styles, and that’s actually a good range!
Calligraphers easily take offence at being told their carefully crafted scripts are fonts, but I
think it’s an easy and understandable slip to make. If you’re interested in diving into the
calligraphy world, read on.
A little bit about terminology
(but I won’t take offence if you talk about my calligraphy fonts!)
Calligraphy is the art of beautiful writing with a specialised writing tool made for that
purpose: a broad-edged nib, a pointed nib, brushes, or even a feather or quill. It usually
displays a contrast of thick and thin strokes (either via pressure or the angle of the nib,
depending on the calligraphy style), and it is this which differentiates it from “joined-up” or
cursive handwriting.
Hand Lettering
Hand lettering (including sign writing) is the skill of drawing letterforms by hand in a variety of
styles using any number of lettering tools.
Faux Calligraphy
Often when making signs (chalkboards, for example) where you can’t use a dip pen as the
scale is too large, we use “faux calligraphy”. Faux Calligraphy is a technique to reproduce
the look of contrasting thin and thick strokes to make wording look like calligraphy but is, in
fact, hand-lettered. Still with me?!
I muddy the water slightly when talking about my calligraphy. When teaching, I always talk
about calligraphy being more like drawing than writing; you use your nib to link a series of
shapes into letters. This helps when you start tweaking and developing your own style and
critiquing your own calligraphy.
Copperplate to Modern Calligraphy
With the calligraphy styles I am drawn to (from the traditional copperplate style through my
slanted modern calligraphy style to the ultra-modern bold lettering style), I lift my calligraphy
nib as often as possible.
One day, I might decide to tackle the American Spencerian style, developed as a business
hand which was a faster alternative to copperplate calligraphy; it’s much more of a fluid style
in that you are not encouraged to lift the nib after every stroke, as with copperplate
calligraphy. But that day isn’t close yet!
Hand Lettering vs Calligraphy
I am certainly guilty of using calligraphy and hand lettering interchangeably. However, what I
don’t budge on is the use of “font” when discussing calligraphy!
At this point, I turn to Nona Blackman, copywriter, for definitions as she provides the most
straightforward explanation I can find:
“A font is a set of text characters, numbers, punctuation, and symbols which have a
specific style, weight, size, and effect.
A typeface is made up of fonts that share common design features. For example, the
Arial typeface is made up of more than 28 fonts of differing styles, sizes, and weights
like Arial Regular, Arial Bold, Arial Italic, etc.
With the advent of desktop publishing, the term font began to be used to replace
typeface, with operating systems and various applications using the term font; in
their menus instead of typeface.
For example, you upload fonts to the Mac library, not typefaces, and both Adobe and
Google offer font libraries, not typeface libraries. In addition, in web development,
typeface has been completely replaced by the class name font-family. These
practices have blurred the lines between the two terms which, in common usage, are
now used interchangeably.”
Calligraphy Style Fonts
You will have seen fonts which look like calligraphy, but these are all created by essentially
linking text characters together to create this look, rather than the mindful creation of
individual strokes resulting in entirely unique calligraphied pieces.
In short:
Calligraphy is writing letters (lifting the nib often), hand lettering is drawing letters, handwriting is what you learn in school, and fonts are not what we do!