Thoughtless: Research

I was looking for a way to express the typewriting of a thoughtless person… if that is even possible. When looking to a person's handwriting it can give clues about personality according to a research from the National Pen Company in the U.S. Even though I was not interested in designing a handwriting typeface I thought this investigation (and especially this article) was really interesting and helped me identify aspects of handwritten typography that could be extrapolated to a typeface.

I also looked into some different typefaces that emulates handwriting:

At this moment in time I was reading the manga Death Note when I realised something: the typography used by the Shinigamis (the gods of death) is actually quite thoughtless. Despite how scary this might sound actually Shinigamis are, in fact, quite thoughtless. So I decided to analyse the elements of this typeface and identifying them might allow me to use it with a sans font. I identified not just irregularities, but also randomness in rotations, baselines and weight. At first I wanted to stay subtle and I was not interested at all in sharp edges, dots, filled counters and the general magical feel.

With these elements I researched even more and I found things like these from Friends of Type (Sorry about the language). There is some kind of thoughtlessness in the way the liquid behaves despite it is defining some letter forms.