You know the junk mail that's addressed with what looks like handwriting? "Oh," you think, "maybe somebody has been caring enough to actually pen me a letter."
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So sneaky, those mass-mailers are. And now you can be sneaky, too.
For $9, a little time, and a bit of patience, you can create a computer font from your handwriting at fontifier.com. It's the simplest way I've seen to turn my scribbling into computer type. Other services require snail-mailing your handwriting sample or buying pricy software (such as Font Creator at $50 or vLetter Pro at $150).
Start at Fontifier by downloading a template form—a grid printout you use to write by hand the letters and numbers you want to make into a font. You want all the letters to be roughly the same size and centered in each square on the grid, so the process is a little tricky. Then scan in the completed template into your computer, and upload that file to the Fontifier site. In just a few seconds, the site converts your handwriting to a font you can download. One key benefit: You can view the results before you fork over the $9. If you do, those fonts can be used in PCs running Windows and Mac OS X.
I ended up scanning in four or five handwriting samples before I got a font that I thought looked good; early versions had certain letters way bigger or smaller than the rest. The final result looks enough like my native handrwriting to be a bit eerie.
Not that it's really going to fool people. For one, the computer font produces such consistently spaced letters, and in such straight lines, that it looks a bit suspicious. A second glance also reveals that the "e," as with every other letter, always looks exactly the same. Conceivably, you could download several versions of your handwriting and mix them in address templates. But if you're that sneaky, chances are you're not in this for the geeky fun—you're more likely trying to sell me something.
