Want to write like a genius? Now you'll be able to thanks to designer Harald Geisler and physicist and dancer Liz Waterhouse, who successfully funded a Kickstarter to create a digital version of Albert Einstein's handwriting.
It took Geisler, who has also made a font of Sigmund Freud's writing, six months studying samples of Einstein's handwriting to create the prototype. To do so, he traces each letter on a tablet, which he feels is a better method than simply scanning text and letting a computer do the work for him.
But he has to make several versions of each letter, because real handwriting produces a variety of differently drawn letters.
The Washington Post's Rachel Feltman reports:
The completed Einstein font will automatically shuffle between one of four variations for each letter of the alphabet, number, punctuation mark, and accented letter (to allow for international use). In fact, if Geisler and Waterhouse hit their stretch goal of $30,000 -- a distinct possibility with nearly $18,000 raised and 37 days to go -- he'll create a fifth set to make the font even more realistic. At $35,000, he'll add Greek letters to the mix.
The project already has supporters in important places.
"While producing documents in Einstein's handwriting would not alter the quality or respectability of my own physics research, there's something very pleasing about representing the universe in the same style as someone who was himself so effective at it," said Phil Marshall of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC Stanford. "It's also just very nice handwriting, which perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise: Einstein's equations were beautiful, so it makes sense that their presentation should be as well."
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