Cavafy Script

In addition to distributing printed pamphlets of his poems, C. P. Cavafy also took the trouble of sending handwritten copies to friends.

His handwriting provides the world of Greek letters with a unique legacy, since it preserves the dying art of calligraphy. In 2014, the Onassis Foundation decided to digitize the handwriting of C. P. Cavafy. In addition to a complete set of monotonic and polytonic Greek characters, the resulting typeface also serves most European languages written in the Latin alphabet, as well as Turkish. Cavafy himself spoke and wrote “English, French and a little Italian”, which proved invaluable during the design process (even today, the design of Greek letter forms is usually done through a process of “hellenizing” Latin characters). Design solutions were found for the Latin letter forms through the study of original notes and letters that form part of the archive.

The design of the C. P. Cavafy typeface was based on the Singopoulo Notebook, and was undertaken by the Greek Digital Type Library in collaboration with the graphic designers Yiannis Karlopoulos and Vasilis Georgiou (www.fonts.gr).