Harriet Richardson and F37 build a typeface made from three ages of the artist's diary confessionals

"Working with F37's Ryan Williamson on the production of the font, the typeface spans three eras of Harriet's writing life: ages four, 13 and 30 years old. The glyphs are an amalgamation of her diary scribblings, which, when included in the typeface, become a an archival project of not only Harriet's stylistic habits but also of the time of writing - there's no hashtags or @'s to be found in thes early texts."

"In her teenage writing, there's an angsty urgency through the heavy "pressing-too-hard" handwriting of someone desperate to prove something - and this shines through in F37's translation of the graphite blitz that takes place in adolescent tell-alls. "This process made me acutely aware of how much we perform even in something as ordinary as handwriting," says Harriet. "I found myself dissecting everything: past and present selves, the unconscious choices I was making, and the question of who exactly I was performing for.""

"Details mean a lot to Harriet, so she veered into diva-esque demands: there must be penis and vagina glyphs (use those in your corporate projects), there had to be at least five variations of em dashes in her age 30 set and certain words that she writes most often must appear in one very particular form. For example, when you type one of Harriet's fourteen exes' names, they automatically switch to how she would have written it at the time."

The typeface, produced with F37's Ryan Williamson, spans Harriet's handwriting at ages four, 13 and 30, combining diary scribblings into archival glyphs. Early entries omit modern markers like hashtags or @s. Teenage handwriting shows angsty, heavy 'pressing-too-hard' marks captured as graphite-blitz alternates. The age-30 set includes multiple em-dash variations and specific word forms; the font substitutes exes' names with versions reflecting how they were written then, a feature termed 'auto-yearn'. Alternates replace traditional weights to preserve natural, lived-in authenticity rather than fabricated childlike mimicry. Research uncovered childhood ephemera showing selves as layered and carrying earlier versions forward.

Read at Itsnicethat