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Turn Your Garbage Handwriting Into a Personal Font

by Matthew Zuras on June 25, 2010 at 06:05 PM

sample handwriting from pilothandwriting.com
Calling all counterfeiters, identity thieves and extortionists! The pen-makers over at Pilot have recently launched a free Web app that converts your handwriting (or, we suppose, anyone else's) into a typeface. Check out the video demo after the break. It makes the process seem simpler than it really is, but we have to say that, whether you'd use it to compose a thoughtful digital missive or to blackmail your boss with a letter he didn't actually write, we're fairly impressed.

Simply hop over to PilotHandwriting.com and print out the alphabet template. Once you've drawn your letters, you can scan or photograph the paper to upload to the site -- or, better still, you can use your computer's webcam to take an instant snapshot. The demo makes this look deceptively simple, and we had some trouble getting all of our letters to render correctly. (It took a good half-dozen attempts to get it nearly perfect.) Some letters didn't even show up at all, but that's okay. The app includes some (rather primitive) editing tools to help you sharpen your script.

Now, your writer has never won any awards for penmanship, but Pilot's renderings make the text look slightly more like a ransom note than we'd prefer. Still, that could be the fault of a public school education rather than the programming engine behind the app. The only downside to this is that you can't export your font as a TrueType or any other format. The site does, though, handily save your login information and your typeface with it. So, if you're bored, go make a font. It may be the most creative thing you do all day. [From: Reddit]

Tags: font, handwriting, pilot, PilotHandwriting, PilotPen, top, type, typeface, WebApp, webcam, writing

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