The handwritten a is a circle with a vertical stem on it, but the typographic one has a shorter bowl on the bottom and an arched hook on the top of it. When we write a g it’s a circle with a vertical stem descending to an upward arching hook, yet the typographic g has two circles with a squiggle connecting ‘em and an antenna up top. An antenna up top? How come more letters don’t have little deely-bobbers like that on top? That’s cool!

But alas, teaching children to draw typographic letterforms like a “hook a” or a “loop g” is a daunting task. If you can get by communicating with a simple geometric form, then it’s probably best to go that way, because it is easier to teach as children are learning to write.

So my personal attempt to help unify the differences between handwritten and typographic letterforms is not to teach kids a new handwriting style, but to instead to make typographic fonts more handwriting-inspired.

The new Panefresco fonts are not handwriting fonts at all, they are clean, precise, “typographic” fonts. But they do have a distinct influence from handwritten shapes, most notably the a e and g.

It’s not the first font in the world to include these shapes in their alphabet; Futura is probably my historic fave. But Panefresco is a modern, new distinctive yet clear font, available in a variety of weights from Light to ExtraBold. It’s for teachers who want to use these handwritten shapes in their classwork and are frustrated by the limited selection of these kinds of fonts.

And also, because it’s for teachers, Panefresco is free. Because we know teachers don’t have a lot of money to spend on things like fonts. The Panefresco fonts are based on the previously existing Titillium fonts, and as such are released under the very generous SIL Open Font license.

“The goals of the Open Font License (OFL) are to stimulate worldwide development of collaborative font projects, to support the font creation efforts of academic and linguistic communities, and to provide a free and open framework in which fonts may be shared and improved in partnership with others,” sez the Open Font License. Sounds good to me.

This is the first font I’ve ever released under this kind of broad and free license, and it’s something I’m really proud of. I like to give people fonts for free and share my typographic wealth and expertise with them. I’m glad to be a part of this ongoing collaborative Titillium/Panefresco project, and grateful to be able to help equip educators of the world as they endeavor to teach our children to read and write.

Good luck y’all! Enjoy the new fonts:)