Famous Signatures Through History

  One last thing: consider where you'll use it. Legal documents and contracts need a signature that's at least partially legible — someone should be able to connect it to your printed name. For everything else, go as abstract as you want.

Because until he changed it, he had a spectacularly hilarious signature, much derided at the time, especially for the fact that it would have made its way onto US currency [1].

I'm still kind of sad he changed it though, would have loved to have a twenty with that signature on it in my office.

0: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/182033320...

1: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/01/jack-lews-terrible-s...

E.g.: https://i0.wp.com/www.themarginalian.org/wp-content/uploads/...

(I think later in life his signatures lost the cigarette)

I think that's on the low side. My signature got locked in during my early twenties, when I worked at a commercial AM/FM radio station. I had to sign various transmitter logs (FCC requirement), about six times every three hours as I recall, and I worked six days a week, so a lot of signatures. It still took a while before I could sign consistently without thinking about it (muscle memory).

>One last thing: consider where you'll use it. Legal documents and contracts need a signature that's at least partially legible — someone should be able to connect it to your printed name.

I don't think this is true, although you may need witnesses to your legal signature if the best you can do is sign with an "X". After all, there are people without hands, blind, or other disabilities that might prevent a "normal" signature.

And these days, with paper checks becoming uncommon and credit card payments skipping the paper receipt to sign, how often do people get the chance to sign anything on paper?

>But for everyday use, emails, creative work? It can be as abstract as you like.

I don't think trying to maintain two different signatures makes a lot of sense, but if you are pasting an image (e.g. emails), I suppose it's not that much trouble.

The historical signatures were a nice touch Claude helped me put together for SEO.

Thanks ChatGPT…