I procrastinate. By staring at fonts.

Everyone has their own little procrastination thing. You know, when you’ve got a nice big pile of work to finish or some errand you have to do before the day’s end but you just, don’t, wanna, do, it, now. Mine: font-staring. If it were a sport I’d train for it.

A few days ago I was about to start the very hyped The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society when a client rudely interrupted my afternoon demanding  changes to something I had written. While confirming the requested changes, my eyes flitted between my computer screen and the book right next to my laptop. I wondered: is the script on the front cover a font or hand-crafted calligraphy?

First I looked inside the book for clues. On the inside flap, I discovered that the jacket cover was designed by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. And I thought Pfeiffer was a tough name to spell on the phone. Roberto has a most amazing site (though a bit heavy on the Flash, I think), but I didn’t find anything on The Guernsey book there. Drats.

I proceeded to do a search for “font on cover of Guernsey Literary Potato peel society” but didn’t find anything. Drats.

I looked at the time on my laptop: one hour to finish my real work or I’d be in trouble. Drats.

Fonts and calligraphy fascinate me because they set a tone for the message they communicate. In the case of the script on the Guernsey Literary cover, I instantly thought the story must have something to do with a very personal written correspondence; I mean, why else use that beautiful script on an envelope with canceled postage stamps? Sure enough, it’s a story told through a collection of letters. (After two days I’m only on page 30 but it’s quite good. I’m so happy when a book lives up to its favorable reviews).

I never found the script but in the process I did find a few fonts that were a tad similar, and one that bears no resemblance but packs a ton of personality into each letter. It’s called Albemarle Swash and I downloaded the free version. It might work for things like groovy invitations and announcements. But not for a Stephen Wright joke. (please click on the photo to see a larger version)

About the cookie: my first design in a while…simple sugar cookie with a base layer of white royal icing. Letter m and dots were hand-piped onto the base layer. All recipes for icing and cookies can be found on my Recipes page; please click on the tab at the top of this blog page. cheers, mari

Tagged as: albemarle swash, calligraphy, fonts, guernsey literary potato peel pie society, literature, novels, procrastination, stephen wright