Questions
Questions about turning handwriting into a font
What the payment buys, what stays on your device, what you actually have to write, and what this does not do yet.
Do I need an account?
No, and there is no signup form to find. You are given a session the moment you arrive, your page belongs to it, and the only email address anyone asks for is the one you type at the checkout, if you get that far.
Do I need a printer?
No. The page you write on is a ruled notebook you already own, at whatever line spacing it happens to have. There is a printable sheet if you would rather use one, but nothing needs it.
Does my photograph get uploaded?
No. Your browser reads the page, corrects it, removes the printed rules and cuts it into letters, and only the cleaned letter shapes are sent onward, about 100KB of them. There is no file storage anywhere in this product, so the photograph has nowhere to go even in principle.
What does $19 buy?
The font files for the page you wrote: a .ttf and an .otf carrying the same outlines. It is one payment for that one font, not a subscription, and the files keep working whatever happens to us.
Is any of it free?
Yes. Building the font, seeing it render, watching your own sentence typed back in your own hand, and the link you can send to someone else are all free and all sit in front of the payment. You decide after you have seen the result, not before.
Which characters do I write?
81 of them: 26 lowercase, 26 uppercase, 10 numbers, 19 punctuation. That is the floor for a font that does not visibly break in ordinary typing, and it is about five minutes of writing.
Can I use a pencil?
No. Pencil is too faint and too grey to separate from the paper reliably. Use a pen, and use one that is not the same colour as the printed rules, because the rules are removed by colour. Blue ink on grey rules is ideal, black ink on grey rules is the one combination with nothing to work with.
Does it work with joined-up or cursive handwriting?
It will give you your letters, but not your joins. A word written without lifting the pen cannot be cut into characters without guessing where one ends and the next begins, and this pipeline does not guess. If you normally join everything, write the four sets with a gap between each character and you will still get a font that looks like your hand.
Will the font work in Word, Google Docs, Figma or Canva?
It is an ordinary font file, so it installs the way any other font installs and every app that reads the fonts on your machine will find it. Google Docs is the awkward one, because it only offers fonts from its own library and has no way to add yours.
Does the same letter always look identical?
No, and that is the point of the sentence you write at the end. Where a word in it comes apart cleanly, each letter is kept as a second form, and the font alternates between the two forms as it sets. A double letter stops being a photocopy of itself.
What if I clear my cookies, or open it on another computer?
The receipt we email you carries its own download link, which does not depend on the browser you bought from. The page itself stays public so you can share it, but the file is not served from the page to someone who has not paid for it.
How long does the whole thing take?
About five minutes, and nearly all of that is the writing. The photograph is read in seconds and the font is assembled in about as long again.
Longer answers: the method, installing the file, and how this compares to Calligraphr.