A website that turned the handwriting of music icons into fonts has been taken down by the creators under pressure from intellectual rights owners involved with the singers’ estates.
The Songwriters Font project uses original handwritten letters and notes to turn the musicians’ penmanship into free downloadable fonts aimed at inspiring today’s poets and songwriters.
The handwritings were based on five modern musical icons—John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg.
“Songwriting is about inspiration,” say creators Julien Sens and Nicolas Damiens.
“Write songs as the ones who inspired you before. The Songwriters fonts have been created to give musicians inspiration.”
“Writing lyrics with the handwriting of influential songwriters helps imagination to develop. Being in the mood of Bowie, Cobain, Cohen, Gainsbourg, Lennon, might be purely imaginative… but that’s precisely the point.”
The website stated that the fonts are “for personal use only”.
After news of their project came out, Sens and Damiens were contacted by intellectual property rights owners and had shut down this website because of legal issues.
The duo posted a note on the website “We’ve launched the SongwritersFonts project, a series of typefaces created from famous songwriters’ handwritings, as a design project,”
“The unique purpose of this was to inspire musicians and the next generation of songwriters to put their imagination at work. But, the unexpected success of this project went a bit too far… “
“We have been contacted by intellectual property rights owners, and are sad to announce that we have to shut down this website because of legal issues. We’re sorry to have to say goodbye.”
What do you think about downloading handwriting of music icons?