Graphology/Handwriting Analysis

Another reason as why it handwriting is good, is because besides the beauty of the art, there's a lot of character, personality, meaning and sentimentality behind one's handwriting. After reading "The Graphologist Alphabet" which i found very interesting where Graphology of today claim many meanings for each person's tendencies in handwriting. I decided to further explore this outlook of handwriting.

I found this picture below where the 'y' loop tells a lot about what you will be like in bed.

Through this image you can clearly get the idea where you land up in bed. A person can be aggressive, normal, exaggerated or unsatisfied in bed. By this you can reveal a person's most secretive characteristic which only the bed partner knows.

Here is a Handwriting Analysis deck of 64 connected, illustrated cards that teaches you handwriting analysis as you use it.

Niour Diab Yunes looks at Culture Distinctions and Associations in Handwriting

Nour Diab Yunes proves through graphology that there is a human consensus in commodifying elements from remote cultures, and that identity is determined in national, social and occupational systems within culture itself. 

More research and initial ideas

I thought I'd make notebook covers with four different era's in different colours to show the evolution of penmanship. After drawing the images and making the covers I realised that this possible idea would not serve a good purpose as it wouldn't really be promoting or encouraging handwriting. If i choose to make a promotional item for handwriting, this may not be a solid enough idea. 

I need to decide whether I want to PROMOTE handwriting again, or encourage it to those who don't handwrite as much.

Meanwhile, I started researching different pens - Over time handwriting started getting more technical and handwriting became more of a SPEED thing to get something done fast as oppose to an art. It's where a pre-historic time transforms into the roaring IT era.

Evolution of Pens - Uses and Benefits 


- Stress Relief 
- Emotional
- Therapy
- Sincerity in Letters 
- Human
- Freehand Writing 
- Calligraphy - Freehand, Doodle, Pen Sketches

History

4000BC - Man scratches surface of moist clay tablet with bronze or bone.


3000BC - Egyptians developed a form of writing with pictures. For writing on papyrus scroll scribes used thin reed brushes or reed pens.


1300BC - Romans have been developing a form of writing, where they scribed into thin sheets of wax (on wooden tablets). Romans used a metal stylus. When they no longer needed the writing, they rubbed it out with the flat end of a stylus.


600 - 1800s - The Europeans found that writing on parchment with a quill pen alter the style of their writing. At first they used to use capital letters all the time, but later they developed faster styles with small letters. Quill pens were the writing instrument from 600 - 1800AD


1800 - 1850s - A metal pen point has been patented in 1803, but patent was not commercially exploited. By 1850, the Quill Pen usage was fading and the quality of steel ribs had been improved by tipping them with hard alloys of iridium, rhodium and osmium.


1884 - Lewis Edson Waterman, insurance broken invent the first proper fountain pen.


1888 - 1916 - The Principle of a ballpoint pen actually dates from the late 19th century when John Loud took out patents in 1888 for a product to mark leather and in 1916 by Van Vechten Riesberg.


1940s - 1943 the first commercial models were made of the Biro Ball Point Pen. The Ballpoint pen is more rugged than the fountain pen.


1953 - First inexpensive ballpoint pens were available when the french Baron, Bich, developed the industrial process for manufacturing ball point pens that lowered the cost unit dramatically.


1960s - Papermate's Flair was among the first felt-tip pens to hit the U.S. market in the 1960's. Following the initial success with felt-tips, manufacturers branched out with a variety of fibre - tipped instruments.


1980 - 1990 - Rollerball pens employ a mobile ball and a liquid ink to produce a smoother line.


Present - Rubberized writing instruments are commonly used by the companies to reduce the grip.


All this information on the evolution of pens is really fascinating and interesting.

Researching the impact of writing using different pens


Handwriting has turned into more of a speed issue where people just want to write something quick as oppose to it being an art where your thoughts just flow. I started looking at different pens and found that the type of pen you use has a huge impact on your writing speed, stamina and style. The chart below describes the pros and cons of the three main types of pens:

As you can see, fountain or rollerball pens are more difficult to use and cost more, but you'll experience the least amount of friction and have the smoothest glide. This equates to faster writing time, less strain and longer endurance. In my experience, i can write almost 10% faster when using a fountain pen over a ball pen.

Thus was looking at possibly making a series of notebooks that come with a specific pens. After researching the different speeds of pens, i realised it would be interesting to use a combination of speed and some sort of evolution of pens.

The 4 pens I've decide i could provide

-The Quill with an ink bottle
- Fountain pen
- Ball Point
- Gel

Supplying a pen would have two functionalities. Supplying a pen and blank paper enforces using it and writing in it. Secondly what if the user was to find different fun facts and useful information about that particular pen and uses and benefits of handwriting? 

Is Handwriting a Dying Art?

I am a huge lover of hand calligraphy, even though most people would say that it, along with paper correspondence, is a dying breed. While that may be sadly true in some respects,I still think handwriting/type is one of the oldest and most beautiful art forms.

Here are a few articles that suggest that it is a dying art.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7907888.stm

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/10/handwriting

http://www.mamamia.com.au/social/letter-writing-is-a-dying-art-says-baroness-greenfield/

After looking at these articles that suggest that handwriting is replaced by typing as its faster, legible and neater. I decided to go back into the history of writing.

History of Writing

The history of writing records the development of expressing language by letters or other marks.^[1] In the history of how systems of representation of language through graphic means have evolved in different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbol. True writing, in which the entire content of a linguistic utterance is encoded so that another reader can reconstruct, with a fair degree of accuracy, the exact utterance written down, is a later development, and is distinguished from proto-writing in that the latter typically avoids encoding grammatical words and affixes, making it difficult or impossible to confidently reconstruct the exact meaning intended by the writer unless a great deal of context is already known in advance.

Writing Systems 

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that one must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. By contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps, and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of mankind (see Origin of language). However the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication has been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. The great benefit of writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation.

The invention of writing was not a one-time event, but a long evolution preceded by the appearance of symbols, possibly first for cultic purposes. Canadian researchers from the University of Victoria suggest that symbolism was used by cave painters of the Neolithic Age. ".

Developmental stages

A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general series of developmental stages:^[9]

• Picture writing system: glyphs directly represent objects and ideas or objective and ideational situations. In connection with this the following substages may be distinguished:
  1. The mnemonic: glyphs primarily a reminder;
  2. The pictographic (pictography): glyphs represent directly an object or an objective situation such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical;
  3. The ideographic (ideography): glyphs represent directly an idea or an ideational situation.
• Transitional system: glyphs refer not only to the object or idea which it represents but to its name as well.
• Phonetic system: glyphs refer to sounds or spoken symbols irrespective of their meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:
1. The verbal: glyph (logogram) represents a whole word;
2. The syllabic: glyph represent a syllable;
3. The alphabetic: glyph represent an elementary sound.

Modern writing

The nature of writing has been constantly evolving, particularly due to the development of new technologies over the centuries. The pen, the printing press, the computer and the mobile phone are all technological developments which have altered what is written, and the medium through which the written word is produced. Particularly with the advent of digital technologies, namely the computer and the mobile phone, characters can be formed by the press of a button, rather than making the physical motion with the hand.

The nature of the written word had evolved over time to make way for an informal, colloquial written style, where an everyday conversation can occur through writing rather than speaking. Written communication can also be delivered with minimal time delay (e-mail, SMS), and in some cases, with an imperceptible time delay (instant messaging). Writing creates the possibility to break spatial boundaries and travel through time,^{[citation needed]} since a word normally spoken could only exist in the time and space it is spoken in. It creates a certain immortality, that could not be experienced without writing. Socially, writing is seen as an authoritative means of communication, from legal documentation, law and the media all produced through the medium. The growth of multimedia literacy can be seen as the first steps toward a postliterate society.

An info graphic that i found showing that text msgs (SMS) majority are sent by youngsters aged 13 - 17, showing that we rely heavily on technology to communicate as oppose to the basics. 

History of Writing Instruments 

Ancient Writing Instruments - Quills, bamboo, pen sharpeners, fountain pens, pencils, brushes

The history of writing instruments by which humans have recorded and conveyed thought, feelings and grocery lists, is the history of civilisation itself. This is how we know the story of us, by draw ins, signs and words we have recorded. 

The cave man's first inventions were the hunting club (not the auto security device) and the handy sharpened stone, the all purpose skinning and killing tool. The latter was adapted into the first writing instrument. The cave man scratched pictures with the sharpened stone tools onto the walls of his cave dwelling. The cave drawings represented events in daily life such as planting of crops or hunting victories. 

Florian Hardwig has researched the forms of school scripts and various models that are used for teaching children how to write. 

The poster that came with the three books above - "On Air Lines, Flame Bows, Speed Loops" - dialects of handwriting 


Express yourself through Handwriting

Han na Jung's project encourages people to use their handwriting rather than digital typefaces.
Handwriting represents designers’ emotion and themselves. During the digital era, advertising, campaigns,
and branding are increasingly adopting the rough-hewn style of manually created typography. Although
people are welcome to technology and new devices, some of them prefer traditional communications
methods, such as books, face-to-face conversation, and physical mail. An overload of technology might
make people miss the valuable communication ways.

After looking at Han na Jung's Project which portrays different moods and feelings through handwriting, I thought would be quite cool to make my own font - as oppose to having "Bold, Italic, Light, Underline etc" which usually comes with each font you purchase... it would come with "happy, sad, angry etc" which means people could portray their mood and feelings through their writing. 


I need to do a survey to see what people's opinion is, in regards to handwriting being a dying art. 


Possible Questions to ask: 
- How often do you write?
- When was the last time you actually wrote, and what or why were you writing? 
- Do you prefer writing or typing, and why?
- At what age were you taught handwriting?
- If you are writing in print, when was the last time you wrote in cursive?

After looking at handwriting, i started to look at the FOUR ERA's of Penmanship


- The Quill 
- Printing Press 
- Typewriter 
- The computer


Inspiration:

LOVE LOVE LOVE these notebook covers - such a cute idea and concept , i could try doing something similar. 


Here I've just done some drawings to start experimenting with initial ideas 

and the last 5 months of student life begin.....

Possible Ideas for Personal Brief

- Re-exploring my gen-y brief from 2nd year but looking more closely at handwriting as a dying art, and creating possible solutions that show it is a dying art, or create awareness of the art of handwriting 
- Re: Translation -   Printing out all the emails i receive in 72 hours - presenting the text/visuals in an alternative form. 

- How sexism and sexuality is used in typography
- How has image-editing software influenced and distorted our perception of the female figure in fashion editorial?
- Are we giving away too much information about our lives as web technology advances? secrets 
- Feng Shui - how it affects us, the art of placement, colour, symbols
- Music - the beauty and meaning of lyrics - language - interpretation - feelings and emotions 
- What is coding? - Looking at communicating a message through coding or secret language that only the sender and receiver understand




GRAPHOLOGY

Graph-ol-o-gy – The study of handwriting, especially when regarded as an expression of the writers character, personalities, abilities etc.

Background: Glorifying the use of computers and cool fonts from blog to blog seem to be a daily casual affair. Everyone is typing or texting (SMS), even documents that are passed around only require a signature. Today, many schools are shifting to computerized exams. Thus signaling the end of individualism and the entrée of some robotic techno future.

Brief: One must put a stop to this insanity by looking back to where it all came from, a more traditional art. I am interested in looking at how to remind people of this art, identity, beauty and sentimentality behind one’s handwriting. Look at the pros and cons of handwriting. Possibly even encourage handwriting?

Research: - Collect Results by conducting a survey investigating how often people write and how they feel about handwriting.

-       History of Handwriting

-       History of Writing Instruments – The Different Eras of Penmanship

-       Evolution of Pens – Uses and Benefits

-       History of Pens

-       Expression through handwriting - Handwriting Analysis

According to my results, if it is true that handwriting is no longer necessary to learn in the 21^st century then I would like to find a way to make people want to practice it, or learn it, want to write, raise awareness of this issue. Dig deep into the history of handwriting.

Possible processes that I hope to incorporate would be screenprinting, possibly letterpress if I’m re-investigating the different processors according to the era’s and possibly mixed media.

Ideally I would like to have 3 possible outcomes/solution if not then the 1 outcome must be a solid idea.

Schedule

Week 1 – Explore and collect research and starting to think of ways to either incorporate research as a final piece or find a solution – Intial Ideas

Week 2 – Lots and lots of experimentation

Week 3 – Final Piece – 3 outcomes