Mix Old Girl
Growing up, I went to an exclusive all-girls school in the Philippines. Of all things, my alma mater was known for a distinctive way of writing. In third grade, I remember having an hour of Penmanship class each week dedicated to teaching us how to perfect the sharp edges of each letter. Perhaps surprising to people who know me as "the font girl," I think I nearly failed the class. The strict nun who taught us how to write was not shy to point out how bad I was. I got it, I sucked at handwriting. Trying to save myself from embarrassment, I trained myself secretly how to up my chicken scratches to pristine calligraphy. Sure, I never got to the point of perfection… but I got that hang of it. My "Assumption Penmanship" got a B+ at the very least.
Photo from @aaoldgirl. Original source unknown.
Fifteen years later, alumnae started asking me to create graphics for school-related events. I didn't have the perfect Assumption handwriting, but it was good enough. I could always just tweak things digitally. Then, the requests started becoming a bit more frequent. With that, came more edit requests. I thought to myself, there must be a better way. Here I was, with nearly 60 handwritten fonts under my belt (at the time). I just thought to myself, it was time to just do it.
There I was, writing out each letter multiple times, trying to get the perfect rendering of each glyph. Sure, I was never going to claim that it was the official font or anything like that. But I just knew. I knew how important this identity was to the institution. I didn't want to disappoint. It took me nearly a year to complete the entire set.
After some hesitation, I just closed my eyes and hit Publish. The download was available on my site. I posted a link on Facebook, so that my friends and family (most of whom came from the same school) would know that I finally did it. What happened next was beyond expectation. I was not prepared.
Within hours, my link was reposted and shared a thousand times on social media. Various media channels were contacting me for interviews. My site was receiving hundreds of hits per second, causing my site to crash. There I was sitting in a Starbucks, calling my server people on the other side of the globe, asking them for a band-aid solution. It was a hit.
Seriously, who knew a font could have such an impact on a community of people?
