Handwriting Ad Campaign for Chase Ink

I was commissioned by Chase to create a campaign of handwritten testimonials to promote the Chase Ink card for small business. Each testimonial reflected the personality of a specific entrepreneur, and the style of lettering needed to reflect the content of the copy as well as the real or imagined archetype of the speaker. Some of the characters were easy, and only a few versions were required to convey the tone. Others were much more challenging and went through many changes as the team considered how the whole set of styles would play off each other, as well as how the individual should be expressed. Here are just a few of the many varieties of style that were tested, with some notes on the challenges of specific styles.

Bistro owner: a casual generous style with some nice variations in letter size.

Handwriting for a decorator: some flair and elegance, artful but understated.

The architect was very difficult. The print ads did not show a face, so was this a man or a woman? Should the writing be the dry geometric style that would be typically written on blueprints? Or should it express the more creative side of the business? If we went with the classic architect handwriting how regular should it be? If it was too regular would it look like a font?.

Architect handwriting evolution, from dynamic script to buttoned-down and back again.

The Contractor: Simple, direct, Mr. Tablesaw. His handwriting is a cousin to the architect’s script, but looser. I would have liked to give him a rich inner life, but not this time.

The Doctor was definitely the most fun. Since when do I get to be completely abstract and illegible?

Lastly a customized style of handwriting was applied to a series of banners, brochures and additional advertisements. The biggest design challenge was how to stylize the text so it seemed like a natural extension of the campaign, without duplicating the look of any of the specific personalities featured. If you are only used to working with fonts the idea of commissioning handwriting art may seem intimidating. You can see here how the process works, and what a wide variety of styles can be created, all of them alive and uniquely expressive of the text.