“Hello, Goodbye” is how the Songwriter Fonts website greets you. What was once a website created to inspire musicians creativity through typing in the handwriting of their icons has been shut down.
The Songwriter Project was created by the graphic designers Julien Sens and Nicolas Damiens. Their intentions were to put the user “in a special mood,” causing them to “play in a different way [because they are] thinking about them,” with them being the musician whose handwriting you’re typing in.
In the month that it took Sens and Damiens to develop these fonts they managed to collect the letters, numbers, and symbols from the handwriting of Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, John Lennon, Serge Gainsbourg, and Leonard Cohen. As explained in an article by Gunseli Yalcinkaya this was done by gathering handwritten documents and then using a font software to digitally reproduce them.
Since the launch of their new typeface, Sens and Damiens were forced to take down their website after intellectual property rights owners stepped in. Now when you go to download your free fonts all that is available is this message:
“Hello, Goodbye. We've launched the Songwriters Fonts project, a series of typefaces created from famous songwriters' handwritings, as a design project. The unique purpose of this was to inspire musicians and the next generation of songwriters to put their imagination at work. But, the unexpected success of this project went a bit too far... We have been contacted by intellectual property rights owners, and are sad to announce that we have to shut down this website because of legal issues. We're sorry to have to say goodbye. J&N”
Now, this brings up the question that while this was an interesting idea, was this morally correct? In order to create these fonts, the designers had to go through each musician's handwritten documents and in Kurt Cobain’s case, this included his suicide letter. Creating these fonts also allows anyone to write anything in the handwriting of these musicians, which can be very problematic.
As commented by Miles Teg on Yalcinkaya’s article, “Someone’s own handwriting is a very personal thing. I don’t like the idea of sharing it this way for everyone to use. I’m sure this has been done with good intentions, but comes out as disrespectful at best, in my opinion.”
I would have to agree with Teg here. From the surface, this project seems like a cool idea but once I delved deeper the idea of typing in someone else’s handwriting just doesn’t sit right with me. Only the musician should be able to write in their handwriting. No one should have the ability to make it look like their words came from the mind of someone else.
What do you think?
