Creating a presentation by hand using calligraphy | Hacker News Reader

Creating a presentation by hand using calligraphy

nibrahim.net.in

134 pointsbaijum22 comments

Beautiful handwriting. Letter writing is a lost art, both in writing and meaning. Doesn’t anyone know or recommend a pen-pal websites where people exchange hand-written letters just for fun? My hand-writing is horrendous (as my spelling) and I’d love to get better at it.

I'd love to have something like that. Written letters are way more personal and real than emails.

The mere mention of pen-pals makes me feel nostalgic. When I was in high school, I had a lot of them. I found them in pen-pal sections of some educational magazines. A couple of them used to write beautifully and one was the finest calligrapher I’ve ever known. My daily waiting for letters via postal mail was a ritual. I was in a village and the mail was not delivered on a daily basis. I still have hundreds of letters I got from all of them. I’m talking about the early 1990’s. One of them is still friends with me, but now we message or call each other :)

> pen-pal websites where people exchange hand-written letters just for fun?

I don't think it can be practiced anymore.

BBC carried an article today on the very topic of handwriting (Do we need to teach children joined-up handwriting?) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41927258

I don't know about cursive writing but practising calligraphy is very deliberate and involved. I get into a trance like state when I do it.

I recall being forced to learn Cursive Script[1] in early grades, since 'it's all you would use to write Essays and assignments in once you got to high school'. Upon reaching highschool we were always asked to print.

I think it should be dropped in favor of Typing Courses. While I suspect youth are on devices a lot, it's likely mostly touch screens. This also would possibly help children learn more words quicker as well as a useful skill.

I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I suspect it's all done this way now).

Turns out I was holding my writing utensil wrong. With it resting on my Ring Finger knuckle[2]. This grip had my thumb, ring, and middle fingers all bearing down on the tip, causing far too much pressure. As an adult it took a while to learn a proper grip and I now enjoy writing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian

[2] internet example https://i.imgur.com/krdw7sT.jpg

"I grew up with awful handwriting, to the point of failing Standardized Testing, I recall being one of the first students to be allowed to type it(I suspect it's all done this way now)."

I was diagnosed with dysgraphia in 4th grade and was allowed to type most things from then on; except by a couple of shitty teachers who thought I was just being lazy or something (and, not coincidentally, those were the classes I failed and was held back in). This was back in the 80s when learning disabilities were somewhat novel in small-town schools in the south. I was lucky enough to have a computer (a C64, with printer!) at home beginning around that same age. I don't recall if it came into the house before or after my diagnosis...probably just before.

I've always thought I was really lucky to have had a computer at such a young age at the time, but now that I'm thinking of it on the timeline of when I was dealing with having trouble writing and being treated like I was stupid by teachers because of it, I'm seeing that luck and privilege in a new light. Once I got a copy of SpeedScript and later GeoWrite, I was able to do nice reports and homework...it became somewhat of an advantage or at least less of a curse.

If you're simply looking for a pen-pal, you can always write someone in prison. Two sites would be http://writeaprisoner.com/ and http://www.meet-an-inmate.com/ With very limited or no access to email, prisoners remain one of the last pen-pal groups.

This.

Years ago, from Europe, I have been the pen pal of an inmate on death row in Huntsville, TX. It is a great experience and you truly get more than you give. But do it only if you can commit to it, keep in mind that the other person does not have much choice.

I used this association, this page is in many languages (eng included):

http://www.santegidio.org/pageID/44/langID/en/Writing-to-a-p...

I'm always jealous of folks who can draw/write effectively and beautifully. I'm dysgraphic, so even writing legibly on a whiteboard is not really an option for me; I mean, I can struggle through and make it legible if I take about five times as long as someone else would take, but even then the writing won't be beautiful, by any definition. Writing on the chalkboard in school was a real source of stress.

One of my favorite presentations ever was a description of public key encryption where the presenter used hand-drawn cartoons and drew some in real time. And, one of my favorite explainer videos is the Food is Free intro video, which is all hand-drawn by one of the founders of the project (who's also in the band BLXPLTN, among others; he's pretty good evidence that talent isn't evenly distributed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlC-4MgfICU

That's good. I've seen your calligraphy passion and skills separately on twitter. This is a nice combo when a techie can be more than a techie which is very common in the west where a developer also fishes or surfs, but being in india Noufal you're an inspiration!

this is cool

tl;dr: Make beautiful presentations with calligraphy

I might be mistaken, the post doesn't link to an article providing insights on preparation of a keynote presentation.

The article does describe more than just the calligraphy, although that certainly is the main focus. Example of preparation unrelated to calligraphy:

> Mortimer Adler suggests making a detailed outline of the speech and then using those as notes. I wasn’t familiar with how to do this so I gave the speech like I would usually do and recorded it on my phone. It was excruciating to listen to myself but I did it. Took around 45 minutes. I transcribed everything I said onto paper and that gave me my first draft.

I agree. the calligraphy was in some sense the excuse for going over and over the talk and making the result a considered effort. I think many speakers have the same problem I do. I stop being able to look at my own work far too early, and have to really force myself to go through more than two passes.

Practice talks help a lot, not even because of the feedback from other people but because it forces me to pay attention to what I've done and how lacking it is. (edit: obviously feedback is helpful too)

maybe if I wrote it out multiple times in longhand I would make sure to finish all my thoughts/sentences and actually read the thing through

tl;dr - writing your slides out in calligraphy is hard.

The post would be better reframed as, “calligraphy is hard and time-consuming.” Doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a keynote presentation. The output is gorgeous, but I’d be curious if you couldn’t get better results faster and cheaper with an outsourcing service.

Well, I certainly didn't expect that but then again, the business slant of HN is part of its nature.

This was as much about the process as the result. I practice calligraphy as a hobby and spend time and energy to get better at it. Getting faster, cheaper, and better results by outsourcing would rob me of the process and that's killing the project as far as I'm concerned.

(P.S. I wrote the post).

> This was as much about the process as the result.

Cool - but the process of WHAT? If you’re working on calligraphy, make the post about calligraphy. As a frequent presenter, I read the title and went, “great, let’s see how another presenter prepares.” This wasn’t really about the keynote at all - it’s about designing slides with calligraphy. Step back and think bigger picture - you could write this as, “how to build slides with calligraphy” and get a bigger, happier audience. People would love to see how you lay out that kind of thing, how long it takes, how long you’ve been working at it, etc.

However, it has nothing to do with Python, PyCon, 2017, or a keynote. It’s just long term presentation design. It’s an evergreen post that’s worthwhile for people who do any kind of presentation.

It’s like saying, “2017 Range Rover sale preparation,” and then writing thousands of words about innovative and timeless sales techniques. The title and first few paragraphs really undersell what you’re doing.

While it's perhaps counterintuitive, audiences often respond better (particularly in advance, where a title has to do it's work) to framing things in grounded concrete terms that are, as you point out, overly specific, rather than generalized abstractions that end up seeming ungrounded. Now, for some segment of the audience that works less well after the fact, but it's usually a minority and, perhaps more importantly, its after the fact.

Ah. Now I understand what you're trying to say. I titled it like that simply because after I delivered the presentation, a lot of people asked me about it and this was written more or less for them than for a general audience.

I think I should retitle it as you've suggested.

Yet another suggestion: the title is fine, you're telling the story of how your prepared the PyCon India 2017 keynote. I was a bit surprised to see it was about how you physically made every slide using calligraphy. If you just added a paragraph at the begining explaining that, it'd be fine by me. It was still good to see[0] though, and I loved Jouberts quote about teaching.

[0] I didn't read it entirely, but skimmed and took a quick look at the slides.

This is like saying, "why are you learning to play the piano when you could get the same results from listening to the track on Spotify?"

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