Write as... Taras Shevchenko
On the occasion of the poet’s 200th birth anniversary, designers presented the font called Kobzar KS, which reproduces the Bard of Ukraine’s handwriting. People are welcome to use it for free
It is the first time that in Ukraine a font has been developed based on the handwriting of a famous figure. Implementing Kyivstar’s initiative to create such a font took Ukrainian graphic designers Dmytro Rastvortsev, Lukian Turetsky, and Hennadii Zarechniuk three months. The font is based on the facsimile edition of Shevchenko’s manuscript poetry col-lection Three Years, kept in the archives of the Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv. Graphic designer Turetsky told us: “I prioritized the esthetic component when creating the font, imagined in which mood Shevchenko wrote down his poems, as they are often very expressive by content, and it is reflected in strokes and pressure patterns.”
The masters were looking for patterns in the handwriting of Shevchenko, scanned and OCRed the texts they needed, and finally compiled the data obtained into a program and developed the font. According to Turetsky, it was difficult to reproduce the manuscript feeling of the font. To avoid electronic uniformity, the user can vary the letters’ shapes by lengthening the letters’ tails or changing their joins. “Shevchenko wrote in Ukrainian, but we have developed versions of the font for all European languages, and also punctuation marks and figures,” Turetsky told us.
The project is non-commercial, and anyone can download the Kobzar KS font for free from the site kobzar.kyivstar.ua, install it on their computer and use freely. The website dedicated to the new font allows one also to create posters, write and send e-mails, and create T-shirt designs. “The Kobzar KS font should appear soon in the global database of fonts, and it will be available then to designers around the world,’ Kyivstar’s head of corporate communications Petro Ivanov stressed.
Director general of the Taras Shevchenko National Museum Dmytro Stus emphasized: “The font reproducing handwriting of Shevchenko is a very important thing. People have always said that we have a great, but non-technical culture. Therefore, our children have liked foreign cartoons and foreign cultural infrastructure more than domestic counterparts. I am convinced that this font move will bring Shevchenko and his work closer to our children’s minds.”
“The project is being implemented just as we need it,” Minister of Culture of Ukraine Yevhen Nyshchuk said. “Now we are looking for ways of presenting Shevchenko to the public, especially young people, and I would like to see projects offering non-standard approaches to the poet’s personality. The ministry has supported the idea of the font, because it is a way to get the young interested in the figure of Shevchenko. People can now write letters to their sweethearts or mothers using the Bard of Ukraine’s handwriting, and thus contacting the poet’s mighty genius directly.”
Art historian Ihor Dudnyk shared his impressions of the project with us: “The Kobzar KS font is unique in that it integrates visual and verbal aspects of Shevchenko’s legacy. Importantly, specialists distinguish calligraphy, art handwriting and so-called everyday handwriting, which is highly individual. Calligraphy is kind of artistic generalization of a particular era, while clerical handwriting bears the mark of the individual. Creating a style based on a particular handwriting pattern is a hard work for artists, because they have both to make letters calligraphic and esthetic, and preserve certain individual characteristics of handwriting. The Kobzar KS’s developers have handled both tasks well.”
