Adelie Blizzard – A Digital HandWriting Font – An Australian-Antarctic Humanities Project

Relive the boredom of the Antarctic Winter of 1913!

When I first read about the Adelie Blizzard in a historical account of Mawson’s Australian Antarctic Division, I was instantly enthralled. This mysterious newspaper was the entertainment and craftwork of overwintering Expeditioneers, and an amazing historical artefact of its time.

“To prevent boredom and restlessness during early Arctic and Antarctic over-wintering expeditions, leaders often encouraged ‘cultural’ activities, one of the most successful of which was the production of newspapers. Expedition members contributed poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism as well as scientific articles and accounts of their daily activities. …… Despite Mawson’s efforts, the Adelie Blizzard was never published, and is rarely discussed in any detail in accounts of the expedition.”   – Dr. Elizabeth Leane: The Adelie Blizzard: the Australasian Antarctic Expedition’s neglected newspaper (http://ecite.utas.edu.au/37891 )

 

At the Mawson’s Hut Replica in Hobart, I was delighted to discover they had one of the few reprints of this book. While it was interesting to see typewritten text, it was the hand-lettered titles that were the most stunning:

It occurred to me that with a bit of digital time, and a few snapshots, I could make a digital font out of their handwriting! And wouldn’t you know, they made it easy: they even included an A-Z of Antarctica.

So if you find this as fascinating as we do, you can now type anything you’d ever like using 100-year old Antarctic Expeditioneer Handwriting! There are upper-case, lower-case, and punctuation symbols.The spacing is a little bit uneven, but see how you go! Experience the magic and mystery and monotony of the Great Southern Ice Continent! Be a part of the Golden Age of Exploration! Relive the boredom of the Antarctic Winter of 1913!

You can easily install this .TTF on Windows or Mac computers. Please share it with anyone who might find it interesting as a gateway to Antarctic history and science.

Download it HERE!