Dash Casual

Based on science and research, but written with the mastery of a skilled hand, Dash is a handwriting typeface system that makes full use of variable expression. After carrying out research for over a year into educational handwriting models, and documenting the evolution of handwriting in the Western world, we have developed a typeface that not only uses the collective characteristics of handwriting as it is taught in schools, but also emulates how handwriting evolves over time into a personal expression of an individual.

While Dash is rooted in the accepted models of writing, it also deviates by degrees from the standard models — which is precisely what turns the concept of collective handwriting into real individual expression. Dash is a connected script typeface that comes in four writing speeds; it takes advantage of both the universality and personalisation of handwriting by enabling an increase in the speed of writing and testing the limits of legibility.

Dash not only comes with different writing speeds, but it also enables a gradual change of expression via sliders. For the user, this means that the speed of writing can gradually be increased, turning a generic model of writing into a highly distinct and expressive kind of handwriting, whereby the letters are stripped down to their essential forms. Dash also allows for variation in the intervals between letters, and this too can be changed by the user. Finally, as is expected from today’s fonts, the weight of the type can be controlled, simulating different writing pens.

To make this personalised writing even more specific, we have studied how forms of letters change based on local preferences. For example, a Spanish writer crosses the minuscule q, while an Italian writer prefers a simplified form. Czechs write the minuscule t without lifting the pen, while an English writer lifts the pen and crosses the t. Dash respects these differences, and the font is programmed to switch automatically to the forms of letters based on the language being used. This observation of local preferred forms of writing led to an in-depth study, Familiarity Effect in the Perception of Handwriting, researched by the Typotheque in-house cognitive psychologist Héctor Mangas Afonso.