Master Thesis

The new four handwriting font templates include four scripts and one grotesque, all designed to complement each other while maintaining distinct identities. Each typeface is built on a simple skeleton that allows for endless variation. By combining and adapting these foundational structures, an unlimited range of new scripts can emerge—evolving further through slanting, tool changes, or added emphasis. While these transformations work digitally, they truly come to life in handwritten form, where the possibilities for type deformation are pushed even further.

Master thesis – Diploma Project

The theme of my Master thesis was to revive a tradition of sign painting, a branch that is currently dissapearing in the Czech Republic, and to become a real sign painter. The goal was to create and offer a contemporary scripts for handwriting and boost the street typography and sign painting craft. The thesis discusses the history of cursives and scripts in Czechoslovakia, it’s origins, context and quality, looking for active sign painters innovation in technology that we could use today. I tried to revitalize the sign painting by not only the implementation as a contemporary craft, but also other work – development scripts into a writing templates, teach lettering and calligraphy and create some new templates for digitizing as handwritten fonts.

Specification

While sign painting is a unique craft and tradition balancing between art and commerce, no such renaissance has taken place in the Czech Republic – yet! The sign painters who once dedicated themselves to original handwriting are either no longer alive or no longer teaching the craft.

Typographers fascinated by the aesthetics of sign painting focus on creating digital scripts, but reviving the field itself is not their primary creative goal. The question remains: is there space for this craft in our country? Are there enough opportunities for its application, enough artists willing to make a living from it, and, most importantly, enough public interest to sustain it?

That is why I aim to help revive this tradition—by painting shop windows, teaching lettering, hosting workshops, sharing resources, and publishing materials. My thesis explores the role of a contemporary letter painter, offering my own adaptation of Czechoslovak type models.

I plan to further develop this project by exploring additional script categories, such as historical, ornamental, and calligraphic styles. This will allow me to reinterpret letterforms for the present and collaborate with a community of writers, typographers, and illustrators.