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From His Own Hand

November 15, 2021

The masthead for the print version of this magazine, “LIBERTY JOURNAL,” appears in a handwriting-style font. The custom font was created especially for Liberty’s 50th Anniversary celebration and replicates the distinct handwriting of Liberty’s founder, Dr. Jerry Falwell.

The project began in the summer of 2020 with the act of sifting through multiple binders holding years of Falwell’s personal sermon notes, many of which were typed and had handwritten notes in the margins. Rachel Dugan, assistant professor in Liberty’s Studio & Digital Arts Department, spearheaded the project and worked closely with the university’s Marketing Department to create the font.

The process took about six months, from studying the commonalities in Falwell’s handwriting to tediously replicating numerous versions of each cursive letter so they can be used in multiple letter-to-letter combinations before preparing the font for use in graphic design software.

“It’s as close as we can get to his actual handwriting,” said Dugan, who teaches courses in graphic design and typography.

Rachel Dugan, an assistant professor in Liberty’s Studio & Digital Arts Department, led the effort in creating the custom font.

In her research, Dugan noticed that like many people, Falwell would often write in all capital letters for emphasis. So she developed two separate fonts: the Falwell Scribe and Falwell Caps, each including a full character set of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

Dugan first came to Liberty as a freshman in 2006, the year before Falwell died, and remembers some of those same notes she researched being preached at Convocation. She still has her own notes from Dr. Falwell’s messages written in her Bible. To her, the project was a personal endeavor.

“I personally wanted to make sure we preserved that heritage,” she said. “I got to hear from him as a freshman — a lot of my introduction to what Liberty was all about came from him.”

As she thought about how many lives Falwell has impacted, Dugan said his words “are still important and powerful, still totally relevant and super inspirational, and still something people will care about. Now, having words in his own writing gives us something unique and different.”

A goal of the 50th Anniversary celebration “is to reflect on where we came from,” she said. “I think subtle things like this, creating a font from Dr. Falwell’s handwriting, can bring our history to life.”

“Liberty is such a special place in so many ways,” she added, “and this font is something that’s uniquely ours. Our brand is authentic; we have an authentic nature to our past, and we will remain authentic as we go into the future.”  


JUST FOR YOU

Download computer wallpaper images with a Falwell quote featuring his own handwriting at Liberty.edu/50. See how many places you can find the new Falwell fonts used around campus and on the website!

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