Fonts vs Handwriting (Why You Should Make Your Brand By Hand)

September 18, 2021 — Fonts save time, but handwriting is the best way to build a unique brand no one else can copy.

Three weeks into my 365 Comics challenge back in 2019, I started to get tired of handwriting all the captions.

I was spending an extra half hour drawing each letter two or three times, and it seemed like a waste of energy for such a small detail — so I decided to make my own font.

It took a few days, but when I was done, I loaded my characters into an app called Fontself, and TADA…out popped a font that looked just like my handwriting!

At first, it was super convenient, but then I realized that convenience came with a price — my comics were starting to look robotic, and it was like, whoops…

I had accidentally written myself out of my own comics.

Hack: Brand By Hand

When I went back to illustrating letter-by-letter, my comics started to feel human again, and when I switched from line smoothing to freeform, they looked even better.

It turns out there’s a good reason why we have people who do handwriting analysis for a living.