David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Leonard Cohen, and other rock icons have had their handwriting turned into fonts, NME report.
The Songwriters Font project, which also includes Serge Gainsbourg and John Lennon, uses “original handwritten letters and notes” to turn the musicians’ penmanship into digital fonts. “Songwriting is about inspiration,” say font creators Julien Sens and Nicolas Damiens on their website. “Write songs as the ones who inspired you before. The Songwriters fonts have been created to give musicians inspiration.”
It’s maybe a slightly morbid project, something closer to a digital death mask than an honest appreciation of your heroes, but Sens and Damiens insist the fonts are a pathway to creativity, arguing: “Writing lyrics with the handwriting of influential songwriters helps imagination to develop. Being in the mood of Bowie, Cobain, Cohen, Gainsbourg, Lennon, might be purely imaginative… but that’s precisely the point.”
If you’ve ever wanted to give your Bowie-Lennon slash fiction an air of authenticity, now’s your chance. Grab the font – for personal use only – at the Songwriters Font website, and check out some examples of the writing in action below.
