(evidence of my serious lack of penmanship!)
Are you at the Alt Summit and want to share your notes with UPPERCASE readers? Tweet a photo of your pages to @uppercasemag or email me a camera pic of your pages and I’ll post them up!
From Luca Barcellona’s Flickr
Milan-based calligrapher Luca Barcellona.
Hasn’t it been everyone’s dream at some point to have beautiful handwriting, to have the gorgeous cursive font or print worthy enough to adorn the most elegant of correspondences or perhaps even wedding invitations?
Interestingly enough, the structure and form of your handwriting has a lot to do with the writing instrument you use. You may think that you are a lost cause for good penmanship, but the reality could just be that you haven’t found the right pen.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that handwriting can differ significantly depending on the type of pen used. Slippery ballpoint pens tend to exacerbate my messy handwriting, fine point gel pens lend a little more traction, slows down my writing and gives it better readability. Whether you’re a young child just embarking into the world of handwriting or a seasoned professional who has given up on a signature style, these “tips” could be just right for you.
First, what type of pen leads to what type of writing? If your font is very readable but you’d like to give it more form, I would recommend bold, inky pens. Such pens have broad tips that make lines smoother. The broad lines help cover subtle imperfections and give your handwriting more of a flow and room for flair.
My recommendations for a bold pen are anything above 0.7 mm. Some top picks are:
Uni-ball Signo Broad UM-153 Gel Ink Pens
Pilot Envelope Address Writing Gel Ink Pens
If, on the other hand, your writing weakness is legibility (i.e. readers confuse your writing w/ a doctor’s medical prescription), then what you need is a pen that gives you cleaner and more defined lines. Rather than bold pens, you probably should go for a finer point that helps make your letters more distinct (is that an “a” or a “d”?).
My recommendations for a fine point pen are anything below a 0.7 mm tip. Top picks are:
Pilot Hi-Tec-C Gel Ink Pens
Zebra Sarasa Gel Ink Pens
Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Marker Pens
Lastly, if you are fairly satisfied with your penmanship but desire a few additional trimmings to your writing flair, I recommend giving italic or calligraphy pens a try.
My my top picks for “finishing stroke” pens, with calligraphy courtesy Josh Scruggs, are:
Pilot Plumix Fountain Pens
Sailor DE Brush Stroke Style Calligraphy Fountain Pens 
Pilot Parallel Calligraphy Pens
Overall, a nice pen can be great motivation for improving penmanship. With a suitable pen in hand, you may find yourself always ready and eager to write down notes, giving yourself more opportunities to improve your writing ability. We at JetPens.com hope it will be “love… at first write”.
I received many nice greeting cards from UPPERCASE readers — thank you! Some were hand-painted, silkscreened, letterpressed, collaged… thank you for taking the time to send a card. I hope you’ll forgive me for not sending a card, but in a few weeks you’ll receive a brand new issue of UPPERCASE so you can see where my time was spent!
An absolute show-stopper of an envelope arrived. My photo can’t do it justice (it’s silver metallic paper with black ink calligraphy.)
Wow! Thank you, Micheline Courtemanche of Betty and Bing Letterpress Print Shop. I was so excited about the envelope that I photographed it first (and then forgot to take a picture of the card!) Michelle has some teaser images on her blog:
Day 1 of Lisa’s new project
I really admire people who can dedicate themselves to a 365 (or 366 this year!) project. Lisa Congdon’s 2010 A Collection a Day was certainly a wonderful example of how fulfilling and inspiring such an endeavour can be. I’m so proud of our book and will forever be grateful that Lisa allowed UPPERCASE to publish the project.
Lisa has just launched a new project: 365 Days of Hand Lettering:
Each day for 365 days for the year 2012 I will post an image of something I have hand-lettered: a letter of the alphabet, a word, a phrase, a quote, a name. Some of the lettering will be based on traditional forms of calligraphy or vintage lettering and some will be of my own design. I am taking a calligraphy class right now and will certainly incorporate much of what I learn and practice there. I will be mostly working with ink, nibs and brushes, but will occasionally use pens. Some of the designs will be quite simple and some more elaborate.
I’m sure Lisa’s blog posts will be added inspiration to all of us working on improving our handwriting this year.
A Collection a Day is available in the online shop. And it’s on sale this week, you can save $10!
As the year starts to wind down, I start dreaming about all the things that I’d like to do in the following year. At that point, the new year exists in the future as an ideal, a fantasy… In my mind, I say, “In the new year, I’ll have more time to do X, Y and Z. In the new year, I’ll have systems A, B and C in place to ease my workload.” It’s a soothing thought to think that the new year will bring a fresh start, a clean slate. Especially at such a busy time for my business—with managing the surge in Christmas orders and subscriptions, there’s also a magazine to edit and design and get to the printer before the holidays.
This November, I thought I was on my way to getting the X, Y and Z and the A, B and C set up. After considerable thought, planning and diligence, I hired a full time employee. Despite best efforts by all concerned, the person just wasn’t working out and I had to let them go (a few weeks before Christmas! I felt like such a Grinch!!) So rather than ending 2011 with some help and light at the end of the work tunnel, I was going solo once again: editing, designing, shipping, database entry, subscription management… The equivalent of at least two full time jobs in a part-time schedule (I stay at home with my toddler in the mornings).
And so here is the first of January. (So soon! How did that happen?) The season of resolutions and best intentions. And now begins the really hard work: figuring out how to achieve the ideal. I suspect it is going to take the rest of 2012 to get there.
* * *
A FEW CREATIVE RESOLUTIONS
• improve my handwriting! I have so limited time that when I write anything by hand, my thoughts rush faster than I can write (emailing and typing on the keyboard are the culprits) and my scrawl is just awful. I resolve to make time to slow down, breathe, write and appreciate pen on paper. I will be posting handwritten blog posts as often as I can muster. I suspect that there are many of you who share my desire to improve your handwriting. I invite you to join me in pen posting! Leave a comment if you’d like to join me on this quest.
• more online content. I have no shortage of content to share, but the blog has necessarily had to be ignored at times. I’d like to get back into regular posting as well as sharing more behind the scenes of the magazine process and supplemental content to each new issue. (The bigger project here is a complete revamp of all of my online assets.)
…and of course, more great content for the magazine and future book projects to be announced!
Happy new year to one and all.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
