Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs | Atlas Obscura

Oh, the uniformity!

Source: Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs | Atlas Obscura

5 Replies to “Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs | Atlas Obscura”

  1. How did you make two different headers that remain stationary, while the posts scroll? Clever fellow.
    Speaking of uniformity, check out the font used by architects. Possibly the most difficult aspect of (now outdated) drafting.
    Navel architects took drafting to a new artistic level, with the beautiful drawings (and exquisite fonts) of Nathanael Herreshoff being pure art.
    When I was in architectural school, I struggled with the uniformity of the accepted font, only to abandon hand drawing all together, in favor of computer drawings. An art form killed in an instant.

    1. I know that architectural drafting script style well. It inspired a commercial digital font popular in the 90s called Tekton. I still love seeing it on reproductions of old plans and blueprints (the original, which still had personality, over the digital version). I see a flavor of it on my Melonseed plans from the Smithsonian. Scribes.

      Oh, and per your first question, I only steal from the best. Beyond that I can take no credit.

  2. So you won’t give it away? If you see it on a site you know well, you’ve been hacked.

    I once subcontracted for a designer who drew by hand and our finished documents needed to have continuity, though I used AutoCAD. I used a font that could have been her own, the name of which, of course, I can’t remember. Many hours went into imitating her style.
    That’s the meaning of the exercise – so drawings made from many hands look like one person did them.
    Hand-in-hand, so to speak. 😉

  3. Hey, I wanted to type in my own emoji, but it changed to a little yellow face by itself. Does a man have no individuality anymore?

    Now I see you have the header on some kind of slideshow. I bet you feel pretty clever. ‘Cause of course, you are.

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