Ivan Vazov's handwriting will become a free computer font in 2027. Stoilka Arsova, who heads the national card and payment scheme department at Borica, announced this as she opened the "Written History" project presentation at the ethnographic exhibition of the Regional History Museum in Burgas, on the eve of Independence Day. The museum and the department hosted the event.
The project turns handwritten documents by Bulgarian historical figures into fonts anyone can download from the project's website and install like any other computer font. Teachers, lecturers, researchers, designers, artists and anyone else can use them for free.
"Written History" began in 2021 with Vasil Levski's handwriting. The handwriting of Hristo Botev and Georgi Sava Rakovski followed, and this year it was Rayna Knyaginya's turn.
Dr. Zhaklina Zhekova, a font designer, calligrapher and lecturer at the National Academy of Art, was the guest speaker at the event. She explained how the team worked on Rayna Knyaginya's handwriting, noting that few of her documents and letters survive. The team used two main documents held by the museum in Panagyurishte: a letter Rayna Knyaginya wrote at 14, and a second one written at 21 in Moscow, where her handwriting already looks more confident.
Two fonts were made based on her writing. The first follows her handwriting, while the second is based on the letters from the flag she embroidered for the April Uprising.
"It takes a whole year to turn one person's handwriting into digital form," Arsova said. She added that with Botev and Rakovski, the team also found texts written in Latin script — something they did not find in Rayna Knyaginya's case.
Arsova said the handwriting of historical figures shows how writing styles once differed from region to region across the country, and that each person's handwriting carries its own "DNA," passed down through generations. She believes the manuscripts hold the spirit of their time, and turning them into digital fonts brings that spirit back into modern culture. The organisers say the project aims to preserve authentic manuscripts and pass them on to new generations.
Tenth-graders from Burgas Commercial High School visited the museum with their history teacher. They looked at the fonts based on Levski, Botev and Rakovski, learned about each stage of the work on the historical documents — from research and analysis to graphic processing — asked questions, and tried writing with pen and ink.
The initiative forms part of the "Apostles of Liberation" project. Those involved include Stoilka Arsova; Stefan Peev, who created the Levski font; font designer Pavel Pavlov, who made the Botev font; Trifon Andreev, who created the Rakovski font; Krasimir Stavrev, executive director of the Punkt studio; graphologist Sasho Atanasov; Dr. Zhaklina Zhekova; Kiril Zlatkov; Toni Shnitter; and Lina Krivoshieva.
The campaign's partners are the "Ss. Cyril and Methodius" National Library and museums across the country, and the team of font designers, calligraphers and graphologists works directly with the original archives.