VS Grandma's Recipe: A Realistic Handwritten Script Font Built for Designers
VS Grandma's Recipe: A Handwritten Script Font That Actually Looks Like Handwriting
How we used inspiration from real handwritten notes, letters and recipes to create Vicarel Studio’s first handwritten script font, VS Grandma’s Recipe
If you've ever searched "handwritten script font" and spent 45 minutes scrolling through options that all feel slightly off: welcome to the club.
Most handwriting fonts have a problem: they're too consistent. The feel like “a font”, not “handwriting.” Every "a" looks identical. Every loop is the same width. The baseline is either way too consistent or way too bouncy.
Real handwriting doesn't look like that. Real handwriting has inconsistent angles, uneven line weight, letters that connect differently depending on what comes before or after them. It has personality — because, well, it’s human.
VS Grandma's Recipe is a handwritten script font we made because we couldn’t find what we actually needed. It's based on the actual handwriting of Dorothy — the grandma of our designer, Carly Salzman — whose penmanship was beautiful (if we do say so ourselves). We digitized her letters, analyzed what made them feel human, and built a font that replicates those nuances.
The result is VS Grandma’s Recipe: a script font with multiple variations of almost every letter, number, and punctuation mark. So, when you type a word like "coffee" you get two different f's and two different e's. It looks like something written by hand. Because it basically was.
It works great for packaging labels, wedding stationery, recipe cards, restaurant branding, apparel, and anywhere else where the appearance of human touch is needed. If you've been disappointed by handwriting fonts that look too robotic or too dancey, this font is for you.
If you want to know how we actually built it: the process, decisions and nuances, keep reading :)
VS Grandma’s Recipe is a realistic handwritten script font inspired by the actual, beautiful handwriting of our (designer, Carly Salzman’s) grandma, Dorthy.
For years we’ve looked for realistic handwriting script fonts, and we haven’t been able to find the right one. Despite there being countless options available, handwritten script fonts oftentimes have letters that are too repetitious or too calculated — with VS Grandma’s Recipe we bring you a typeface that actually feels like handwritten letters.
Our goal with this handwritten script font — or, any hand lettered fonts, for that matter — is to create something that captures the unique character and quality of truly handwritten notes, letters, or in this case, handwritten recipes.
In order to create a realistic handwritten font, you need to consider the nuances of true handwriting. After analyzing numerous handwritten fonts, we noticed that the disconnect oftentimes came from the consistent digital application of something that was intended to feel handwritten.
Simply: in order for us to create the best handwritten script font, we simply needed to embrace the nuances of realistic handwriting, not the rules of typography. In acknowledging this, VS Grandma’s Recipe adopts inconsistent angles, imperfect line weight, inconsistent spacing, sporadic connecting and/or unconnected entrance and exit strokes, variability amongst letter forms, and a mildly inconsistent baseline.
BUT, to get a handwritten script font that is not just beautiful, but also functional, the trick is to create the aforementioned inconsistencies, consistently.
