“We must have hit a nerve,” sayeth one of those Tampa-area bloggers. I believe that blogger is right.

I also believe that it won’t be long before Ms. Faliero et al. try to silence Tampa education bloggers officially, or at least try to intimidate them into submission.

I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.

I wrote a lengthy guest piece for the UMiami Education Students blog about Hillsborough County Schools and blogging. You can read about Jennifer Faliero foaming at the mouth about misinformation and lies on blogs – and read her call for the St. Pete Times to literally employ someone to monitor blog comments “round-the-clock.”

Oh, and she wants to “force” commenters to register in a verifiable way – and one has to assume Faliero would want that information accessible to HCPS. Good Lord, it’s almost as if she’s a union boss.

Faliero puts a panicked, high-pitched, uptalk “eeee!” in the phrase “Free press.”

Here’s are a few lines from my piece titled “Hillsborough County Schools’ Blog Problem is About Communication“:

“A [growing] segment of the Hillsborough public doesn’t trust the district. That takes time to erase. But in the meantime, trust can be built by using these channels of communication rather than complaining about them.”

It’s probably true of your district, too. I suggest you read the whole thing.

Steve Dembo at teach42 posted about crowdSPRING, a site on which creative projects [logo, website design, etc.] are posted for all to see. Then designers, hobbyists and, as Dembo points out, students can respond to the ad with a design that may be chosen. In “Real World Art,” Dembo writes:

“The site is called CrowdSPRING and what’s amazing about it is that people aren’t competing to win a contract to create the logo/design, they’re actually going ahead and doing the work and hoping to be the one selected as the winner.”

Dembo sums up crowdSPRING better than they do. He goes on:

“At first I was just way impressed at the idea of the site, and that so many professional and amateur graphic designers were participating. Then i started wondering whether any student graphic designers were jumping into the game. After all, why not? If they enjoyed doing design work and wanted to practice in some real world situations, why not try their hand at some logos for real potential clients?”

I’m impressed by the idea, too, and a quick look at something from crowdSPRING’s project tab shows that range of hobbyist to professional. Imagine if Sunkist, who recently tweaked their logo, opened up a similar competition? Very cool possibilities.

Unfortunately, this stuff ruins the world.

First, the crowdSPRING model is a kissing cousin of spec work – and here’s why that’s bad. The professional association for design, AIGA, takes the following position on spec work and design competitions:

“… organizations sometimes initiate contests as a way of developing logos or other identity work. Unlike disciplines in which the designer can bill for implementation of the proposed design (e.g., architecture), in communication design, the submitted solution already represents the bulk of the intellectual work. AIGA encourages organizations to issue a request for proposals from qualified designers. This sample letter may also be sent by AIGA members to help educate organizations offering contests.

AIGA believes that doing speculative work seriously compromises the quality of work that clients are entitled to and also violates a tacit, long-standing ethical standard in the communication design profession worldwide.”

You can see how spec work and design competitions can weaken the sector – but that’s not the big issue here. Especially in education – for developing students’ interests in and capabilities with design – we need to look at the opportunity cost.

The solution is direct, local charity. Walk down the street and give away a design.

If a student researches a crowdSPRING design, mocks one up and submits, he misses out on developing most of the skills that make a designer successful. He’ll have a logo for his portfolio, but he’s not a better designer than he was the day before. That, and he hasn’t done much good in the world.

So how can a student interested in design make a bigger impact on his own development and on the world around him?

1. Identify a business or organization that could use your help. This isn’t hard – it’s fairly obvious who does and doesn’t need a bit of rebranding. Stroll down Main Street, pop in, introduce yourself and offer to do a logo/website design for free. No obligation, no payment necessary. Just ask that you can use the design in your portfolio.

2. Work with them on the design process. This is the skill that matters the most – dealing with the people behind the designs you’re creating. Find out what they want, what they need, and figure out how you can do it. There are loads of free resources that can guide you in that process. Here are a few:

• The Logo Design Process of TOP Logo Designers
• Logo Design Process From Start to Finish
• The Logo Design Process From Concept to Completion

The student learns how to communicate with a potential client and plan/execute project management. It doesn’t get much more relevant than that.

3. Ram home that you’re part of the community – then add to it. These small projects are great opportunities to connect with the people around you. Explain that you’re taking a design class at your high school or that you’re a local student looking to develop a small business in design. You’re part of the community, they’re part of the community. It’s a lot more valuable than an anonymous crowdSPRING design with no feedback process, no connections and no conversations.

Schools especially need all the help they can get with positive PR. Engaging taxpayers, parents, and/or business owners with the fruits of their school taxes – and a bit of promise that local youth aren’t leading their community to Hell in a handbasket – can have a tremendous effect on garnering support of a school’s endeavors.

This isn’t one of those 21st century skills – it’s just old-fashioned, 20th century charity that happens to use Photoshop.

If a business/organization uses crowdSPRING for its logo project and it takes each designer 3 hours to research, sketch and develop a suitable entry, 100 entrants nearly wastes 297 hours.

Hey, one guy’s time will be made worthwhile with his selection and a couple hundred dollars.

My model? 100 students/amateurs go through the design process, build their portfolios and develop professionally. 100 small businesses or charitable organizations get free, high-quality design. 100 schools districts get good PR and 100 communities grow a little.

crowdSPRING’s problem is opportunity cost. It’s a very cool idea, and their PRO section may work out well as a business model, but it’s far less helpful than it seems.

Their idea does nothing to prevent the erosion of communication and community. My model adds to both. You decide.

And then there’s the education blog…

… and Twitter, an excellent, free PR tool. If you aren’t following me on Twitter already – or using it yourself – sign up for free, check my profile and click follow. There’s always a good conversation to have or a good link to click.

That triumvirate of e-media makes it easy to do a roundup of interesting stuff I’ve read, so give a warm welcome to the world premier of the Great Links Curriculum.

The British are one baby step ahead of us in self-destruction. DailyWritingTips brings us a story from the Telegraph about banning “elitist” and “discriminatory” Latin phrases – like bona fide, vice versa and et cetera. Fancy book larnin’s a 20th century skeel, it seems.

“Why Parents Get Angry When They Learn the Truth,” from Motel Special Ed.

“Quantifying Greatness” - Greg Forster debunks an unfounded gripe about the Great Books.

Exhibit 1036a: Perfect example why normal people don’t take educrats seriously, courtesy of Salon. Really, that diagram could be drawn for just about any topic on Earth.

The Carnival of Education is up at the Core Knowledge Blog. This Carnival’s scripting took some real effort – well done.

Flypaper with some sober common sense. Want to retain great teachers? Remove the bad ones.

Obama celebrated in the World of Warcraft? Good Lord, there are so many factual errors in this testimony as to make me want to call the poor kid out. We’ll see.

Having solved every problem in New York public education, the State Education Department decided to buy a ton of fruits and vegetables.

Racial taunts in class for supporting John McCain? You betcha. This ideological intolerance happens a bit more than people realize, and sometimes – as in this case – it can get ugly.

Really, really, really, really smart to get into law school? George Leef at Phi Beta Cons drags that argument back to reality.

Head over to eMailOurMilitary and drop a quick note, even if it’s just a quick thanks.

Bill Gates?!?!? Making curriculum?!?! Relax, mouth-frothers. Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Pondiscio will calm you down.

… and another political candidate in the education world whines while laying bare her ignorance on blogs, media and technology. Advertising, too, I suppose. Well done, Ms. Gallucci of Pinellas County. Perhaps the problem isn’t your makeup or wardrobe, but the woeful inadequacy you bring to the job.

In New York State, the education budget cut spin begins. Give it a day or two, you’ll want to throw money at NYSED just to get this circus to stop.

SPENDonLIFE.com has announced a blogging scholarship program for students. The topic? The importance of credit and preventing identity theft. A year ago most would’ve said this was a bit of a stale topic, but after a tumultuous financial season, this is a hot, relevant topic.

Who’s eligible? You must:

• have a legitimate blog (blogs consisting of nothing but spam do not qualify)
• be at least 18 years or older
• be a full or part-time student of an accredited college or university

Pretty standard stuff. Have a blog, be an adult, go to school.

And what should you write about?

“To be considered for the scholarship you must write a blog entry on your own blog about credit or identity theft. We are not restricting you on exactly what you must write about, instead we are wanting to use your creativity and researching skills to decide on a more specific topic. We do ask that all entries are less than 400 words. That leaves enough room to communicate an idea effectively but keeps it short enough to keep the reader interested.

Each blog entry must also inform readers on how they can participate in this blogging scholarship. The more people that participate in the program, the more of the general student population that will be exposed to this very important topic.”

So, it’s up to you – find a particular facet of credit/identity security that you find interesting and have at it. 400 words isn’t much at all. A page of 12pt, double-spaced, Times New Roman text is about 250 words. That’s a page and a half for a shot at $2k.

Deadline? December 1st, so you’ve got time:

“All entries must be posted on your blog and submitted to us by December 1st. The winner will be decided shortly thereafter and scholarship monies will be mailed by check to the student by January 1st.”

Once you’ve written your post:

Visit our contact form and submit your:

• full name
• address
• email
• phone number
• blog post entry URL

This is an opportunity worth taking if you’re in school, have a blog and can write a concise, meaningful post. If you can’t, your blog probably stinks and you write bad papers in college.

If you write a post, let me know – I’ll be happy to link to it.

In the meantime, here are a few things that you, as a blogger, can do to make our lives as readers a little easier:

• Let us subscribe to comments. We’re a lot more likely to discuss something if we can keep up with the discussion. Reloading a page 20 times a day to see if there’s anything new is a real pain. If you’re using WordPress, consider a plugin like Subscribe to Comments.
• Publish a full RSS feed. I use Google Reader to keep track of over 400 blogs. Publishing a full feed instead of just a few sentences – or even worse, just the title [this means you, Teacher Magazine] – makes it a lot easier to keep up. If I wanted to load a page to read every article, I wouldn’t bother using an RSS aggregator.
• Check your feed’s formatting. Rule #1: Subscribe to your own feed. You’ll see how it appears for other people, too. If your feed mashes together paragraphs into one huge block of text, no matter how long the article, consider checking that formatting. We want to read things smoothly and easily, not sift through text.

And a couple smaller things:

• Don’t use CAPITAL LETTERS for EMPHASIS. Using the right words in a well-constructed argument makes THIS TACTIC irrelevant. Furthermore, it’s an offensive gesture. Do you really think your readers are too dumb to seize on key words and recognize their importance? If you NEED to do this, you’ve failed already. The alternative – and it’s a good one – is to use bold sparingly to catch attention.
• Strikethroughs. This unbearably banal charming addition to the blogosphere irks me. We have no gripe when it’s used properly as a copyediting mark; it’s instructive and honest, two pillars of blogdom. However, most of the time it’s used to denote cheap snark and cheaper sarcasm. There are less obnoxious ways to go about this.

Any others?

Either way, David Cantor and the NYC DoE’ers must feel a bit silly now.

A comment on eduwonkette’s post is pithy:

“Your blog is a testament to the power of facts and ideas over mere authority.”

There we go. That an unknown – whether by design, as eduwonkette did it, or by circumstance, like most others do it – can make such a tremendous impact based on the quality/value of content is worth noting.

I brought this point up, specifically citing our edu-darling, in an e-mail about two weeks ago. Here’s an excerpt with some edits:

“The most intriguing thing about the education blogosphere is how democratic/meritocratic it is… you’ve got Eduwonkette, whose popularity comes from her content, since we know nothing else about her… It’s rare in any sector, especially media, to have such an impact without paying decades of dues, going through the proper channels, etc. About the only thing I can think of that’s so meritocratic is professional sports. This just wasn’t possible 20 years ago in public education.”

And that has lots and lots of implications for what’s ahead.

Yipes. I had no idea how irrelevant we all were. I guess there’s always the patronizing suggestion that we do some good, noble work locally or in a tiny niche – which is the equivalent of sitting the Kids’ Table at Thanksgiving.

Richard Whitmire is guestblogging over at Eduwonk:

“… where the important education reform issues of the decade get debated. I maintain, however, that these debates would be greatly diminished absent indirect contributions from the thousands of sentinels out there expending shoe leather at local schools and school board meetings. Those would be our members at EWA.”

That’s the National Education Writers Association. Take a few minutes to browse their website – what they do, some of the EWA member stories, some of their events for members. Drop your jaw in awe after about 45 seconds [I've got to instruct you because it won't happen naturally].

Whitmire gives a few nods: Jeff Solochek’s Gradebook team in Florida [I say this because Ron Matus pumps out just as much good stuff], Scott Elliott in Ohio and Cathy Grimes in Virginia. I don’t know much about Cathy Grimes’ work in the Newport News area, but I’m well familiar with the other two papers, both of which do a solid job covering their state/local education scenes.

Elliott says:

“Richard has some kind words for Get on the Bus in the course of arguing that education coverage needs traditional media sources because free-standing education blogs could not provide the depth of coverage necessary for quality commentary on the issues without relying on traditional journalism.”

Eeep. No depth, lack of quality commentary. Touche, Elliott.

But it’s partly right – the education blogosphere, like pretty much all the blog sectors, depends on traditional journalism for their material. Why? Because it’s efficient – it’s there and ripe for the picking – not because we aren’t capable of doing it ourselves.

Think of it this way: EWA writers grind the flour [and apparently see themselves as soldier-sentinels with a penchant for gumshoe lore and professional martyrdom, admittedly odd pairings for flour-grinders but perfectly appropriate for writing about teachers] while more knowledgeable folks bake with it.

And, yes, I said it – more knowledgeable. The biggest problem in education writing is the biggest problem in education. It isn’t the budget, it’s the lack of practitioner knowledge.

The irony here is that the dismal state of education writing is evidenced by the lack of depth in education stories. Most education writers – yes, even some of the darlings at the EWA! – haven’t a clue about the curricula they write about. If you want surface-only, uncritical, simplistic coverage, pick up a newspaper and flip around until you find the education stories.

Now that I’m thinking of it, how would your local education reporter fare in the Third World Challenge? And would he/she report his results candidly in the local paper?

It’s the unique depth that I appreciate from the blogosphere – and it’s that depth I don’t get from the bulk of the education media. The content in the education blogosphere simply has more relevance both nationally and on your block than the weekly updates on bus fuel prices and lawsuits/bickering amongst school officials.

Solochek says:

“Could bloggers take up the slack as papers cut education reporters? Not unless the bloggers are education reporters themselves.”

I want to understand that line better than I do right now – I’ve got to be missing something – so if anyone, including Mr. Solochek, can elaborate,  it’s most welcome. He goes on:

“But more mainstream readers like the ones we write for want to know about the local schools and the state’s policy directives, and these reports don’t just materialize out of thin air. That’s what we as education reporters provide, and blog about.”

I’m a little puzzled. Help me understand?

UPDATE: 08.20.08, 6:23pm:

Still waiting… will anyone address this? If there’s something I don’t understand here, lay it out for me.

Thanks to those of you who contributed feedback for my K12 Online Conference proposal titled “Effective Criticism in 21st Century Education Technology.”

Unfortunately, that proposal has been denied:

Hi,

Thank you so much for the recent submission of your presentation proposal for the upcoming K12 Online 2008 Conference. We appreciate your interest and the time you spent creating your abstract.

The review committees had a tough time making their selections with so many quality submissions from which to choose. Unfortunately, your abstract for the Kicking it Up a Notch strand, was not selected for this year’s conference.

One of the new features of this year’s conference is something we’re calling “Not K12 Online Conference”. While we don’t know exactly what it will look like, we want it to be a space where anyone can present and share. Unlike the formal conference, there will not be any restrictions on these presentations. We see this as a complimentary space and would love to have you share here. While we recognize the value of a formal conference with strands and limited presentations, we think there is tremendous value in developing this space. Please consider sharing here. If you have any questions about this part of the conference, contact Bud Hunt (budtheteacher@gmail.com) who is chairing the oversight committee for notK12 Online 2008.

We do hope you will join us by participating in the conference and will consider attending one or more of the live events that are scheduled. We look forward to getting to know you and collaborating together online.

Sincerely,
Darren, Sheryl, Wes, and Dean

K12Online Conference Conveners

http://www.k12onlineconference.org/

As per Wesley Fryer’s comment, I’ve put together a proposal for the K12 Online Conference, 2008.

The topic is ‘Effective Criticism in 21st Century Education Technology’ and draws on both past analysis and the excellent dialog re: NECC 2008.

Before submitting, I’d like to get some feedback on this proposal from those who participated in NECC, are actively involved in K-12 new media and/or take an interest, public or private, in education technology.

I look forward to your comments, and thanks in advance. For reference, please see the proposal guidelines.

1. What is your first and last name?

Matthew K. Tabor

2. What is your email address?

mktabor@gmail.com

3. What is your website or blog address, if you have one?

http://www.matthewktabor.com

4. In what city, state, and country do you live?

Cooperstown, New York, USA

5. Please share a short bio about yourself and your role as it relates to your presentation topic.

Matthew’s background includes work in higher education, executive recruiting, consulting and government. He consults on graduate/professional school admissions, academic media and educates privately. He writes out of Cooperstown, New York.

6. For which strand are you submitting this proposal?

‘Kicking It Up a Notch’

7. What is the title of your proposed session?

‘Effective Criticism in 21st Century Education Technology’

8. In less than 250 words, please describe what you plan to share and do in your presentation. Clarify how you plan to produce your presentation (podcast, screencast, video, PPT, etc.) Remember, your presentation must be submitted in a downloadable and convertable file format, and have a length of 20 minutes or less. Please refer to the online call for proposals for additional requirements.

With Web 2.0 technologies and digital media comes criticism – the good, the bad and the ugly. Ed-tech professionals face a host of challenges: convincing peers that new ventures have unique value; selling communities on the benefits of fiscal obligations; combating centuries of education practice and theory, etc. Education technology professionals, in short, are steering a ship into uncharted waters, and they must take care not to make its passengers seasick, or worse – tipping it altogether.

Such a complex undertaking necessitates a new approach to criticism – an authentic, honest approach that addresses proactively the challenges, both conceptual and factual, to education technology programs. I plan to explore how bloggers, podcasters and other practitioners of new media can seek out and make use of the criticism of peers and the community at large to add value to their programs.

I will present an audio podcast that draws upon relevant examples of criticism in education media – what works, what doesn’t, and how education technology professionals can develop an outgoing, forward-thinking regimen for criticism and eliminate the worry and weight from even the most brash analysis. I will include some personal criticism – some that I have given, some that I have received – and examples from various education professionals [anonymity and/or consent of the authors will be required] so that we all might benefit from our diverse experiences.

9. Goals. State the purpose and intent of this session. Include presentation goals, objectives and anticipated outcomes for participants.

Purpose: To re-evaluate the role of criticism in education technology; to present an honest examination of everyday assessment.

Goals: To encourage K-12 new media authors and education technology professionals to re-examine attitudes toward criticism and embrace the benefits of criticism/analysis from a host of constituencies.

Objectives: To provide a brief summary of the role of public criticism in education; to discuss strategies for drawing upon the talents and offerings of various stakeholders in K-12 education; to examine strategies for coping with and utilizing public criticism.

Outcomes: Listeners will come away with a solid reflection on the role of public criticism in their own professional and personal capacities in K-12 education; they will be equipped with new strategies for inviting and channeling criticism so that it works for, rather than against, themselves and their projects..

10 Justification. Why does your presentation fit in your selected strand?

An important part of ‘Kicking it up a notch’ is developing the resilience necessary to withstand serious challenges from both the inside and outside, as well as utilizing strategies to take the bane of many professionals’ existence – criticism – and re-channel it into a feedback system that, over time, increases the value of the offering and the impact of the individual. Too often the perspectives of those outside the K-12 establishment are avoided; rather than marginalize those stakeholders, we must discuss approaches that encompass their feedback and make use of their insight.

11. Theme How does your presentation support this year’s conference theme: “Amplifying Possibilities”?

As we amplify our efforts, so do our critics – and the result can be either a symphony or cacophony. It is necessary to examine the complex relationships between the differing visions of K-12 education – the administrator’s, the teacher’s, the student’s, the parent’s, the taxpayer’s, those of boards of education – and the common ground shared by all those stakeholders. With the proliferation of Web 2.0 and technology use in classrooms, friction increasingly develops between these players; the effect of our ‘amplified possibilities’ rests on our ability to make use of those challenges.

12. Full Disclosure. Please note K-12 Online is NOT an appropriate venue for vendor-generated infomercials for commercial products. If you have any professional affiliation or commercial tie (vendor or are paid by any company or individual to use, promote, or support a website, project or service) to any of the websites, products or services you plan to discuss in your presentation, please disclose that here.

Nothing to disclose.

Dear Mr. Cantor,

Please consider this a formal FOIL request for scale scores by race/ethnicity referenced in the following document:

http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/07/from-chris-cerf.html

Hard copies are not necessary; electronic copies of the scores for 2003-2008 will suffice. You can e-mail those to mktabor@gmail.com. In your comment to Mr. Stern, you suggested that the data were freely available; you should, then, have no trouble fulfilling my request with all deliberate speed – and certainly within the five business day limit stated in our State’s FOIL statute. If the requested records cannot be emailed to me due to their volume, please indicate the actual cost of copying all records onto media convenient for your Office.

I understand the concern you expressed to Eduwonkette, the inimitable – if anonymous – education blogger, regarding the data’s availability. After all, we can’t be sure that Ms. Eduwonkette is an American citizen [and thus a member of the "public"], let alone a New York State resident. You said:

“I’ve thought about it and decided i don’t want to give out information to someone asking anonymously.”

You need not worry about my identity or my citizenship.

And whereas I appreciate such earnest gatekeeping, undoubtedly in the interests of our State’s security and well-being [such data in the hands of our enemies from within or without, or on the desktop of one whose GRE scores have 500 or 600 points on the mean score of your teachers, might yield unpalatable, unpredictable conclusions], I am reminded of a passage in that FOIL statute:

“The legislature therefore declares that government is the public’s business and that the public, individually and collectively and represented by a free press, should have access to the records of government in accordance with the provisions of this article.”

Though your office may keep the gate, you don’t make the rules. Fear not: New York City’s Department of Education would do well to remember that the next time a blogger, or any member of that ‘free press,’ makes a request for information, you can grant that request with less hand-wringing and heartburn. There was no legitimate reason to deny Eduwonkette’s request; there are no reasons – legitimate or otherwise – to deny mine.

I do apologize that this request was made on a public website rather than via e-mail; as it is in the wee hours of Monday, I felt that it was inappropriate to call you, and your e-mail address was not at the ready [My Rolodex is less fertile than Mr. Stern's or Eduwonkette's]. A Google search of “david cantor NYC department of education” yields little of value, and your listings on the DoE website provide nothing in the way of electronic communication. A curious decision, but understandable when one considers that penchant for gatekeeping.

Many thanks to your and your Office in advance. If you need any additional information – though you shouldn’t, as referring to these data as “them” in the discussion on Mr. Rotherham’s website shows that we’re both entirely clear on the data in question – feel free to contact me at the phone number or e-mail address below.

Sincerely,

Matthew K. Tabor
e: mktabor@gmail.com
w: www.matthewktabor.com
p: 607.821.1752
Cooperstown, New York

UPDATE at 4.24pm, July 28:

For any interested parties, Mr. Cantor’s e-mail address is DCantor@schools.nyc.gov – God knows you won’t find it easily on the DoE website. Now that this post is the first entry for a relevant Google search, no one should have any trouble locating the e-mail address they need.

UPDATE at 10.07pm, July 29:

Mr. Andrew Jacob, to whom the above e-mail was copied, sent along the requested data this afternoon. It is available for download here:

http://matthewktabor.com/downloads/scale_scores_by_ethn_2.xls

I’m doing some reading and recording this evening, so I thought I’d pass along an excellent link forwarded to me by Mr. Russo re: fonts.

There’s a tab on this site for my handwriting font and a link for its download. It’s also listed on dafont.com, which is mentioned in the article, and countless other websites. At this point, if I had a nickel for every time my font has been downloaded… well, I’d have a new car. Not a lot, but not too shabby, either.

And don’t forget, my handwriting is superior to Barack H. Obama’s.

The article below talks about making one’s own font, and it really is as much of a joy as this article suggests. I made my handwriting font on a night when I had the flu. I wasn’t capable of doing anything more than writing a few letters on paper and clicking a few buttons – and it’s a task that can be interrupted frequently for flu-things – and, voila! A few hours later and I had a handwriting font.

Since then, it’s been used for lots of projects and by lots of different people. Many school yearbooks have found it a nice blend of relaxed, genuine handwriting while still being slightly chic/elegant. It has been featured in yearbooks both near and far, US and international.

It’s also been a favorite of scrapbookers – I assume for the same reasons that K-12 yearbooks have latched onto it.

There are two questions which constantly pop up regarding my handwriting font:

1. Aren’t you worried that someone will steal your identity and write checks using your handwriting?

Nope – because, in truth, my handwriting font is one big lie.

Yes, it’s really my handwriting – that part is genuine. But I never, ever print – ever. I write exclusively in cursive [a hybrid cursive, actually, as you'll see in the Obama link]. If one sees something attributed to me and it’s in print, like this font, then it isn’t mine.

The only time in the last 5 years that I can remember printing was when I made the handwriting font.

2. How can I make my own font?

And here’s where A. Russo’s excellent link comes in. I didn’t use FontStruct, but I love what I see – check out the article below for an introduction.

FontStruct is a free, web-based utility to make your own font. No graphics design knowledge required, no technical knowledge. It’s a WYSIWYG setup – What You See Is What You Get.

Like I said, I used something else. I talked to the designer who I respect the most and asked him if he’d heard of FontStruct. Absolutely, he said, and it was, in his words, “Awesome.” I’ve toyed around with it and I have to agree.

Oddly enough, the forwarded piece is from Slate, which I gave up reading just a few days before this article came out.

“YouType: The Strange Allure of Making Your Own Fonts,” by Jason Fagone.

Posted Friday, June 6, 2008, at 1:30 PM ET

FontStruct’s interface couldn’t be more intuitive. The central metaphor is a sheet of paper. You draw letters on the “sheet” using a set of standard paint tools (pencil, line, box, eraser) and a library of what FontStruct calls “bricks” (squares, circles, half-circles, crescents, triangles, stars). If you keep at it and complete an entire alphabet, FontStruct will package your letters into a TrueType file that you can download and plunk into your PC’s font folder. And if you’re feeling generous, you can tell FontStruct to share your font with everybody else on the Internet under a Creative Commons license. Every font has its own comment page, which tends to fill with praise, practical advice, or just general expressions of devotion to FontStruct. “Hey,” comments one gleeful FontStructer, “all of us are going to be little Adrian Frutiger[s]!”

No disrespect to Adrian Frutiger—who is, of course, the Swiss graphic designer who created the Univers and Frutiger typefaces—but why would anyone want to be a little Frutiger? More broadly, why do people create their own fonts? What’s the payoff?

FontStruct isn’t the only locus of DIY font-making activity on the Internet. DaFont.com includes download links to 8,031 free fonts arranged into 71 categories, including “Curly,” “Celtic,” “Fire/Ice,” “Sexy,” and “Army.” Somebody’s making these things—obsessing over serifs, tweaking stems and spurs, skipping story time with the kids so they can finesse the “ear” on a lowercase G. It’s hard to think of a more frivolous pursuit. I just scrolled through the font list on my iMac, and it took me 10 full seconds. Operating systems these days ship with hundreds of fonts, from American Typewriter to Zapfino. Sure, if you’re a graphic designer, you need extra fonts, custom fonts, the kind that happen to be hawked in a small advertising box to the side of every FontStruct window. (The program’s creators are using the free tool to drive sales of their fancy, nonmodular fonts.) But the vast majority of FontStruct users aren’t professional designers, just enthusiastic font geeks.

I know that because I’m one of them. FontStruct brings back a ton of memories; in college, I used to run my own free-font site called Alphabet Soup, where I uploaded cheapie fonts I made with a pirated version of a $300 program called Fontographer. Even today, when I self-Google, I mostly come up with links to my old, crappy fonts. (My secret fear is that no matter what I do as a reporter, the Monko family of fonts will remain my most durable legacy.)

I was a miniscule part of the great grunge-font craze of the late ’90s, ignited by the bad boy of graphic design, David Carson—an ex-surfer who took over RayGun magazine and turned it into a punk-rock version of Rolling Stone, a bible of the ugly/pretty/ugly aesthetic. Carson’s movement was fueled by hundreds of young dabblers like me. In our dorm rooms, we churned out distressed versions of workaday fonts: smeary Helveticas, grimy Garamonds. The self-seriousness behind it all seems strange when I look back, but it was actually in keeping with the manifesto-laden history of graphic design. One of the most famous designers of all time, Jan Tschichold, famously issued a diktat against the use of serif faces, decreeing that the only honest letterforms were sans-serifs. The Nazis, who preferred “blackletter” fonts with heavy, ominous down strokes—what came to be known as “jackboot grotesques,” according to art historian Stephen Eskilson—put him in prison.

The FontStruct community represents the opposite of all of that. FontStruct is about fun and lighthearted experimentation, the pure joy of making letterforms. If the fonts on the site embrace any aesthetic, it’s the freewheeling kitsch of the early days of desktop publishing, when programs like Adobe PageMaker brought the tools of graphic design to the masses well before the masses knew what to do with them. This led to some heinous crimes against the craft, like annual reports plastered with novelty fonts. You’ll find some of that 1980s exuberance in FontStruct’s offerings, like a font that has hairdos, and a font that looks like a city skyline, and a font that’s a bunch of adorable monkeys. But the program also inspires subtler fits of out-of-the-box image-making. Check out the very sexy Structurosa Script, a font that is “cute but also menacing,” as one commenter accurately observes, and WPA Gothic, modeled on New Deal-era posters and dripping with gravitas and retro cool. My favorite FontStruction is probably SlabStruct Too, a font that’s simultaneously meaty and understated, elegant and crisp. (The best part is that I didn’t have to dig through pages and pages of lesser fonts to find these gems, because FontStruct has a star-based rating system similar to YouTube’s.)

The FontStruct aesthetic is largely a function of the font-making application. Unlike the gold-standard program for making fonts, Fontographer, which can turn any shape into a letter, FontStruct imposes constraints. It doesn’t let you make just any shape; you’re limited to the “bricks” FontStruct provides. Also, your font has to be “modular,” the letters conforming to a standard grid (which precludes overly fancy cursive strokes). FontStruct is the Casiotone keyboard of font-making. Maybe you can use it to bang out a credible pop song. Beethoven? No way.

And yet, as often happens in art, aesthetic limitations breed creativity. The most ambitious FontStruct users have created letterforms so ornate you’d never believe they’re derived from a set of prefab shapes. One particularly heroic FontStruct auteur, Wolfgang Krimmel, who seems to be an actual graphic design pro—a ringer!—has constructed two fonts that resemble the text from illuminated manuscripts. Dabblers like me also benefit from the program’s limitations. As soon as I registered and clicked “Create New FontStruction,” I began to draw short, fat, blocky letters just a few pixels high. Then I realized I could make the letters as high as I wanted, so I used cut-and-paste tools to elongate my A and B and C until they were tall and thin and imposing, like the alien ships in War of the Worlds. Then—I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this—I used one of the program’s many editing shortcuts to make it look as if my letters were composed of five-pointed stars. Just because I could. Serendipity is the whole point. FontStruct forces you to be open-minded, to be kind toward the unexpected forms you stumble into. And because FontStruct lets you preview your letters with one click, you can decide instantly whether to keep your changes or sprint off in a completely new direction.

This instant-gratification quality is the true appeal of FontStruct and of font-making in general. There’s something about that moment when your own letters begin to flash across the screen. Partly, it’s sheer childlike bliss—after all, how many hours do we spend as kids learning how to write in cursive, writing our name over and over, regarding our handwriting, hoping it’s special, stylish, distinguishable from the next kid’s? But it’s also satisfying in a distinctly grown-up way. If you’re reading this, you’re probably like me, and you have a job in which you stare at a screen all day. And it’s not even your screen. It’s somebody else’s pixels and windows and letters. Make a font and you start to screw with the scenery—the banal yet elemental DNA of your daily existence. It’s as if you could design and build your own subway turnstile or change the color of a Starbucks cup from off-white to fuchsia. Here’s a program that lets you commit a small, safe, infinitesimally subversive act and then share it with the world. FontStruct may make it worth aspiring to be a little Frutiger, after all.