National Handwriting Day is celebrated on January 23rd in honor of John Hancock’s birthday. As more people use digital devices to type out their thoughts instead of putting pen to paper, the art of handwriting is gradually being lost. This is a shame because our handwriting is as unique to to us as our fingerprint!
The History of Handwriting
Romans first developed written script for correspondence and recording transactions basing it off the Etruscan alphabet. By the 5th century, it started to resemble what we would consider modern cursive writing. After the Roman Empire fell, the development and discipline of handwriting would rest in the hands of Christian monasteries, who continued producing classical texts all over Europe.
Until the 8th century, handwriting still lacked consistency. Styles varied from region to region up. Charlemagne put an English monk in charge of developing a standard handwriting script. Carolingian minuscule featured lowercase letters and punctuation and was designed to be easily read by candlelight. This script was considered the standard until the 15th century.
During the 15th century, Gothic script, a denser style of writing script began to emerge for use on printed parchments and in books. Used extensively by Johannes Gutenberg on his printing press this script became more popular due to printing. However, not everyone was a fan of the Gothic script style. Italian humanists fought to return to a Carolingian script and developed a cursive form of it that would eventually become known as italic. From this period on, penmanship would be seen as a symbol of status and schools began teaching it during the 18th century. Sadly, over the last decade teaching cursive in elementary schools has almost completely disappeared due to technology. Seven states including, California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Utah are now fighting to keep cursive in the curriculum.
Having worked at Hallmark Cards for over 15 years I had the great pleasure to see Lettering Artists who are working to keep the art alive. One such crazy-talented person I want you to know is Jim Fedor!
He has the ability to do many different styles each one more impressive than the previous. I’m always amazed how he can take words and turn them into ART! He could make a simple grocery list look AMAZING!
If you want to see more of his beautiful hand lettering, I encourage you to check out Jim Fedor on his Instagram feed! https://www.instagram.com/1upstream/
