Questions
- What kind of italic print do you use and/or think is most readable?
- Do you emulate an example character set, if so, what one(s) do you like?
- Do you mix and match letters from multiple sets? In all the examples I posted below, there are some little things I don't care for (e.g, the lower-case 'k' with a circle, the upper case 'Q' that looks like a '2', etc.).
Background
I'm new to the world of fountain pens, and I'm looking to improve my italic printing. I have a Lamy Safari with a medium nib, and a Pilot 78g with a broad italic nib. I've found I can write much finer lines and flourishes with the italic nib.
I've done research on character sets to emulate, and I found some are simple and clean looking with little flourish, others have a little more "life" to them, while some are really embellished and fancy looking.
I'm not too concerned with speed as I generally take soft notes in meetings with my laptop. My writing is limited to correspondence and everyday things (e.g., notes, shopping lists, etc.).
Definitions and Examples
I'm defining flourish as things like:
Loops and Curls Accents Lower Case Accents On Ascenders
Simple, low flourish
This is a character set I found online (I forget the site).
I think this would be the easiest to emulate because of all the straight lines, and it would be the fastest to write out. My concern is it looks rather plain (i.e, no life to it).
Spoiler:
Clean, with a little more flourish
This is a character set from Alfred Fairbanks book, A Handwriting Manual.
The capital letters aren't fancy, but most of the lowercase letters have some flair to them.
Spoiler:
Vintage map font, high flourish
This is called Antiquarian Scribe. It is supposedly a vintage map font, and it is for sell as a computer font.
I have no interest in creating a soft document with it, but I thought it looked pretty neat for handwriting with all the flourish on the capitals and lower case letters. My concern here is I think it looks good in a small sample, but would people really want to read an entire letter written with these types of characters?
Spoiler:
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