Sketchnote

The Sketchnote typeface was born of necessity: designer Mike Rhode needed a series of hand-drawn fonts to illustrate and produce his book, “The Sketchnote Handbook.” Because of its origin, this typeface was designed to be practical and convey the human character and quirks of his normal handwriting and hand-drawn lettering.

The family is comprised of five fonts: Sketchnote Text in Regular, Bold, and Italic, the somewhat compressed and bold Sketchnote Square for headlines, and the playful Sketchnote Dingbats.

Sketchnote Text is a casual script with a slightly bouncy baseline. In order to mimic the differences present in natural handwriting, OpenType features are built-in that automatically switch between multiple versions of each letter or number. In total, over 240 alternates in each of the text fonts are employed, making for a more authentic appearance. The warm texture of Sketchnote is the result of actual ink-spread on paper captured in the scans of written letterforms and was intentionally left intact during the digitization process to preserve that feeling.

Rhode created Sketchnote Square as a display type to complement Sketchnote Text. Drawn instead of written, the letters often have neat little happenstance voids within the strokes. Sketchnote Dingbats features a selection of icons, rules, and arrows to provide some functional and fun tidbits, handy for bringing additional life to any design.