When we think of the loss of handwriting as a common skill, we tend to think of it in terms of English handwriting.
But the Chinese are experiencing a similar issue with regards to traditional Chinese calligraphy. And now, as fewer and fewer people learn the painstaking handwriting craft, a core group of traditionalists are working to keep calligraphy alive.
Here’s something interesting: Doodling is not a creation of the modern mind.
Doodling art has been discovered in manuscripts going back hundreds of years, with drawings of cats, funny faces and naughty stuff showing up in the margins of everything from Bibles to texts about King Arthur and Merlin.
A funny little bit of irony at work here: Apparently calligraphy is hot on social media sites like Instagram and Tumblr.
First, there was an article by Business Insider about how calligraphy gets a lot of attention on Tumblr. The article cites the “in a brush” Tumblr and the 13K+ notes on one widely seen example of hand-lettering.
Readers in the US are probably aware that Jon Stewart is ending his long run as host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central.
To commemorate his work on the show, the network’s been live-streaming every episode of the Daily Show from the last 17 years. The other day, I caught an old one with prolific crime novelist Elmore Leonard as Jon’s guest.
So the Sharpie brand seems to have completely abandoned its social media accounts. Arik Hanson at Business2Community.com made that interesting catch …