

Bond – Robowritten notes as a service - woebtz
https://hellobond.com/

======
noufalibrahim
I practice calligraphy as a hobby and am quite amused by this. From a
marketing perspective, "hand written" letters on high quality paper sealed
with wax and delivered to a customer is probably a good way to get their
attention.

However, because of my background, I'm looking at it from the writers point of
view. The almost elaborate ritual of writing a piece starting from selecting
the paper, ruling it, selecting the ink, nibs, hand (that's what we call
fonts) and then getting into a semi-trance while you write it is enormously
rewarding. It's the opposite of everything tech. You have to plan out the
whole piece in advance and can't just "iterate". You can't backspace an error
and often have to throw away an hour of work just because you lost
concentration and wrote an 'e' instead of an 'a' in the last word of the piece
you're working on. It's got a lot of room for "disciplined freedom". Using a
non standard letter form in a place so that the overall piece is more
harmonious is very gratifying. Another interesting thing is that listening to
music while writing can disturb your rhythm as your hand and pen starts to
pick up the beat of the song rather than the letter forms and the piece is
damanged. Several things like this come into play while doing the piece and
almost therapuetic for me. I wish Bond luck with their product but it'd be a
loss for people to not indulge themselves in actually writing by hand just
because this (or other similar) products exist.

~~~
crististm
Can you share some starting points for a newcomer to calligraphy?

~~~
noufalibrahim
Gladly. I learnt all my bad habits from a bunch of "Calligraphy for Dummies"
style books and regret it. It took me quite a while to undo all the damage I
did. If you're serious about it, here are the resources I recommend.

1\. Get _only_ "Foundations of Calligraphy" by Sheila Waters. It's an
excellent book and gives you detailed instructions on all aspects of the craft
from tools, to setup, to hands, to layout and even advice on preventing
burnout. The only shortcoming is that it focusses exclusively on square nib
calligraphy which is very different from pointed pen hands (e.g the kind you
see on
[http://www.jakeweidmann.com/collections/calligraphy/products...](http://www.jakeweidmann.com/collections/calligraphy/products/if-
by-rudyard-kipling-by-jake-weidmann)). I'm not really into pointed nib scripts
(like copperplate or spencerian) so I can't really recommend much on that
front.

2\. Get yourself the highest quality materials you can afford. I generally use
manuscript calligraphy ink along with speedball nibs and a speedball holder. I
use a 90gsm paper from [http://www.jkpaper.com/](http://www.jkpaper.com/)
which is heavy enough to handle the ink but light enough to see through for
the rulings. I like to support the little guys so I usually batch order my
materials from [http://www.johnnealbooks.com/](http://www.johnnealbooks.com/).
Don't skimp on materials. When your initial work is crappy, the quality of the
materials compensate a little and give you the motivation you need to keep at
it. (Cf. [http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-
beginner...](http://zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/)).

3\. Sheila Waters book covers this but it's important to practice rhythm
(where you memorise a short piece and write it out at a consistent pace to
train yourself) spearately from practising analysis (where you critique your
letterforms and correct errors in spacing and other details so that you get
better). You'll need to spend atleast 20 minutes on each of these per day. Add
to that some more time to fix up your paper and seat and you'll need to
dedicate about an hour per day.

4\. It's useful to keep a bunch of cheap calligraphic markers around so that
you can doodle your letterforms. I find it relaxing to do that and it helps me
"stay in touch".

5\. I have a program on my website to generate calligraphic rulings for
various nib sizes and scripts
[http://calligraffiti.in/rulings](http://calligraffiti.in/rulings). In my own
case, the tedium of ruling each sheet manually used to put me off and the
programmer in me scripted the task.

6\. The
[http://www.calligraph.com/cyberscribes/](http://www.calligraph.com/cyberscribes/)
is a mailing list for practitioners which I've benefitted from before.

I myself put out some of my work at
[http://calligraffiti.in/](http://calligraffiti.in/) and did a presentation
for a friends company which was later put up on youtube
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kis5GBr2fk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kis5GBr2fk)

Feel free to email me if you want to talk about it in any more detail. I'd be
glad to help.

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wpietri
Whew! I was worried there was something that marketing people couldn't
cheapen. Thank goodness technologists have labored night and day to
counterfeit handwriting. I especially like their oxymoronic slogan, "The
Personal Touch, at Scale".

As has long been said, "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." I
guess they're all set.

~~~
tdicola
These guys are far from being the first to automate handwriting and
signatures. Chances are if you get a form letter back from a politician,
important person, etc. it's been signed by a robot like this.

~~~
wpietri
Ok, sure? I read the tone as contradiction, but I don't think I said that they
were first to do signatures.

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prawn
My handwriting is inconsistent and after decades of typing, I'm prone to
making mistakes when writing by hand which quickly renders writing thankyous a
painful chore. If the choice is between me sending something like this or not
getting around to sending anything, I think this has its place.

My wife uses TouchNote to send physical postcards from her phone of photos
she's taken of our children to various family members. I think they're pretty
cool, especially when you consider that doing this otherwise is painful enough
that it never happened.

If they're using your handwriting, I wonder if they randomise between a few
instances of each letter rather than having one of each. I imagine all of us
check convincing handwriting fonts by comparing multiple instances of the same
letter?

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Animats
Artisanal spam. Why not?

It's not a new idea, though. The direct mail industry already does this. See

    
    
      http://www.getitopened.com/
    

_" NEW! Use our proprietary technology to hand-address your envelopes! We
specialize in production methods for high volume mailers that will incorporate
realistic hand addressing at a fraction of what it would cost to contract a
workroom to do the job. Simulated fonts made from real handwriting samples are
also available."_

They can also put stamps on slightly crooked so it looks hand-mailed, have
hand-written sticky notes attached to the contents, or include a hand-written
letter on yellow lined paper.

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robotresearcher
Because nothing says 'insincere' like non-handwritten handwritten
correspondence.

~~~
blhack
Nailed it.

If you want to make your spam _worse_ , insult me by having a robot try to
trick me into thinking you wrote it yourself.

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rmorlok
MailLift ([https://maillift.com/](https://maillift.com/)) takes the
alternative approach of crowdsourcing the writing.

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joshmlewis
Getting a handwritten note is cool, I guess, but as soon as this type of thing
becomes mainstream it's just as meaningful as an email yet far less efficient.
I'm not seeing the big secret play behind the scenes that would make this
really valuable.

What am I missing?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Slow adoption, niche service. Companies who adopt it think they'll look ahead
of the curve, and to anyone who pays attention to paper mail and doesn't
automatically treat it as spam, they might.

~~~
joshmlewis
That's what I mean though, is the cure for email handwritten notes? Maybe
there will be in person couriers for all important communication now. /s

~~~
ghaff
I actually think a short handwritten note to thank someone for meeting with
you or whatever is a nice gesture that stands out from the standard email and
doesn't take much effort. Of course, that's real handwritten, not faux
handwritten.

I do receive marketing materials from time to time that make a particular
effort to stand out--sent FedEx or physical swag of some sort or gimmicky
attempts at games/contests/etc. I admit they usually get me to at least look
at the mailing though I'm probably no more likely to buy something.

~~~
joshmlewis
I agree handwritten notes or physical communication of some sort can be
effective if people think it's genuine. The problem with making a startup out
of this is you are inherently fighting virality because once you do go
mainstream you lose the personal value of it.

An interesting comparison is how Facebook started charging to get into a
strangers inbox. The intentions behind this seem to be the same. A world
fighting for each others attention...

~~~
ghaff
Yeah. It only really works if it's not the norm, i.e. it stands out. If every
donation thank you letter over $20 starts being sent out this way, then it
becomes worthless in a hurry. The other downside is that it encourages
outsourcing the personal touch. If you're a charity, you should individually
reach out to your large donors, not outsource that to a faux handwritten form
letter. (Though as others have noted, politicians use robo-signers a lot.)

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igammarays
No thank you. The huge risk of a single customer finding out this deception
and raising a storm on social media would completely reverse the potential
benefit of having a more personal touch.

Maybe if used very carefully and very scarcely.

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nl
Maybe now someone can create a scan-handwritten-notes-and-email-me-the-
contents-as-a-service?

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CoreFailure
Interesting, I don't think that this has a big place in the consumer market,
but I do think this could be valuable to companies wishing to make a statement
in some select letters. Maybe just as that top tier "because we could"
category. When you need to stand out, they could provide that opportunity.

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tlarkworthy
Hey I would like to upload just a SVG and get it drawn with ink. Is that
possible? Multi color too?

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joshu
From a purely mechanical point of view, writing is fairly hard. You have to do
more than bring a pen into a position, you have to apply some pressure, as
well.

I'm currently building a whiteboard plotter (as opposed to a pen) and it is a
PITA.

~~~
gregpilling
is there any software out there that does this, or did you write it yourself?

~~~
joshu
Yes. I am using a CNC motion controller (right now, GRBL) and it processes
gcode generated by Inkscape.

Here is a video in which I test a parameter change (too far, in this case - it
wobbles): [http://youtu.be/a3iNFk0GibE](http://youtu.be/a3iNFk0GibE)

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SnacksOnAPlane
Does it show variation between instances of the same letter? Or is it
basically like making a font of your own handwriting, where every E looks like
every other E?

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johntaitorg
Uncanny valley.

