New Fonts Based on Celebrities’s Handwriting

choi

Sarah Sloat, In a True Metamorphosis, Fonts Turn Kafkaesque--Einsteinesque, too; Typographer’ new designs let computers mimic handwriting of the famous. Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2015 (front page).
www.wsj.com/articles/computer-fo ... sque-too-1433289438

Note:
(a) Harald "Geisler, a typographer here * * * aims to * * * allow[] anyone on a computer to scribble with the curves and flourishes of the world’s greatest thinkers and writers."

flourish (n): "an ornamental stroke in writing or printing"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flourish

(b) "Today, anyone can write as beautifully as Emily Dickinson—or just dash off an email to the finance department in her filigree style."
(i) Emily Dickinson
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
(1830-1886; an American poet; born and died in Amherst, Massachusetts; reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room; two thirds down the Wiki page is a photo of her handwriting)

"Emily Dickinson never married, nor did she have children."  Emily Dickinson Museum (at Amherst)
(ii) filigree (n; ultimately from Latin [noun neuter] filum thread, string, filament, fiber + [noun neuter] granum grain): "ORNAMENT, EMBELLISHMENT <writings … heavy with late Victorian filigree — Jack Beatty>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/filigree

(c) "And in a twist, technology is allowing fonts to look truly human—that is, slapdash and casual. New fonts can alternate different versions of each letter to make script look vivid. Some fonts seem to smudge a page, or screen, with ink. Others let letters jump erratically off the line, or appear to run out of ink as a quill pen would."
(i) font (n; from Old French fonte a founding, casting):
"(printing) a complete set of type [as in typography] of one style and size"
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/font
(ii) slapdash (adj): "HAPHAZARD, SLIPSHOD"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slapdash

choi

(d) "Indra Kupferschmid, a professor of typography in Saarbrücken, Germany"
(i) Indra
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra
is the head god in Hinduism.
(A) But the article identifies the professor as a “she.”
(B) Compare Indira
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira
(one of the several names of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth)
(ii) German English dictionary
* Kupfer (noun neuter): "copper"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kupfer
* surname Schmid is a variant of surname Schmidt.
* Schmidt (proper name): "equivalent to Smith in English"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schmidt

choi

(e) "That dynamic can take Kafkaesque turns. Mister K, a family of fonts developed by Berlin-based designer Julia Sysmäläinen, is based on the manuscripts of Franz Kafka. * * * ‘Kafka himself was an employee at an insurance company,' she notes."
(i) Kafka the person

Franz Kafka
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
(1883 – 1924; table displays signature; born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; never married but had a son he did not know (the son died at age 7); died of tuberculosis)

Quote: “Kafka trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education, obtained employment with an insurance company [the entire life]. He began to write short stories in his spare time. For the rest of his life, he complained about the little time he had to devote to what he came to regard as his calling. He regretted having to devote so much attention to his Brotberuf (‘day job,’ literally ‘bread job’). * * * He had a complicated and troubled relationship with his father that had a major effect on his writing. He also suffered conflict over being Jewish, feeling that it had little to do with him

(ii) Kafka the font
(A) Mister K
ffmisterk.com
(B) Clicking the tab “The Story” of the top horizontal bar in the preceding home page, leads one to

ffmisterk.com/the-story/
* I the right column, underneath the name Julia Sysmäläinen, click juliasys.com--that is her Web page, which says Julia Sysmäläinen "with Finnish-Russian cultural background."
* At the bottom of the home page, it is said, “Buy FF Mister K at FontFont.”  Thus it appears the “FF” in “FF Mister K” stands for “FontFont.”
(iii) Kafka the surname
(A) The Czech and Jewish (from Bohemia) surname Kafka: "from kavka jackdaw"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.
(B) Czech English dictionary
kavka (noun feminine): "jackdaw (bird)"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kavka
(C) western jackdaw
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_jackdaw
(in the crow family)

choi

(f) "Ms Sysmäläinen has more speedily designed * * * Finlandia, inspired by the writing of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, which launched in April."
(i) Finlandia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandia
("a symphonic poem by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. It was written in 1899")
(ii) Finlandia (disambiguation)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandia_(disambiguation)
(may also refer to "The Latin name for Finland (used, for example, in Spanish, Italian, Galician, etc)")

(g) Harald Geisler "creat[ed] a font based on Sigmund Freud’s handwriting."

Sigmund Freud
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
(1856 – 1939; table shows his signature)