She did not live to experience her breakthrough as a poet, but today she is considered one of the pioneers of literary modernity – the American lyricist Emily Dickinson. During her lifetime (1830-1886), she did not share her art with the public. Emily Dickinson lived in seclusion in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her neighbours called her “the white” because she occasionally walked through the garden at night in a snow-white dress, otherwise she rarely left her room. After her death, over 1700 poems, notes, poetry albums, letters – and her last will – to burn them – were found in a heavy wooden chest. Her younger sister Lavinia decided otherwise, and so Emily Dickinson’s poetry was preserved for posterity.
Dickinson’s poem number 1263 begins with the line: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”. For font lovers, this reads like an invitation to take a closer look at Emily Dickinson's handwriting since “slanted” is an internationally used term in typography. In fact, word content and visual style seem to compose such a beautiful unity in the poet's work that we just couldn’t resist developing a typeface transmitting this spirit.
The script font bears the light-hearted name “Emily In White”, which recalls both Emily Dickinson's fondness for white dresses and the lightness of her notes. Publisher Thomas Higginson said of his first encounter with Dickinson's writings: “I received a letter from Amherst in a handwriting so peculiar that it reminded me of the famous fossil bird tracks in the university museum”.
We attached great importance to making the font as natural looking as possible. This is ensured by a huge pool of alternative letters which are controlled by OpenType functions. For the user, this means automatic letter flow with very little manual intervention.
Emily In White’s three weights, simply numbered from I to III, allow for sensitive subtle fine-tuning. If you want to add the finishing touches to this poetic typography, there is no getting around the Swash styles, which make it easy to create decorative lines, borders and patterns (see also Emily In white Swashes .
