The other day I wrote that I couldn’t find an Emily Dickinson’s handwriting font. Turns out there is—a reader sent me a link to this free font. I tried it on a Dickinson poem I’m including in a book I’m designing. Here’s the poem
Snow flakes.
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town –
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down –
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig –
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
Here it is in Dickinson’s hand (from the Emily Dickinson Archive)
Here it is in the free font
I realized that I wanted something that was like Dickinson’s handwriting but legible. The free font was a start, but wasn’t as readable as I wanted. It also looks more like printing, rather than cursive. And while Dickinson did print many of her later poems, Snow Flakes is a very early poem when she was using script. So after looking at a lot of Dickinson’s handwriting on the archive, I waded in to make my own font, but with only the letters I would need. The free font package let me make the letterforms, but I had to do an awful lot of fiddling with kerning and baselines in indesign in order to make them work visually. Here’s my latest take:
