Perfection itself is imperfection. – Vladimir Horowitz
Most of the time, the level of perfection that computers allow us to achieve is a wonderful thing—and something we take for granted. Effortlessly, we draw perfect circles and squares, set type on perfectly straight lines with perfectly straight margins, and perfectly consistent leading. And this is all a good thing. But once in a while you might need to take a break from perfection and give your design a more organic, human touch. And when you do, you should check out the Humane Type script by Beetroot Design.
This free script has two main functions, humanizing body text and titles. When you run the script, you get a palette where you can set the parameters for both functions.
With body text you can select a frame containing text and randomize the margins and line spacing, and bend lines.
The script achieves the bending effect by putting each line of type on a curved path.
For title text, you make a selection within a text frame and choose how much you want to rotate, scale, and space your type.
So the next time you want to give your designs some well placed flaws, you can do it perfectly.
This article was last modified on July 25, 2019
This article was first published on May 18, 2016
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Another name for this script could be JazzyType.
Didn’t they show something like this at MAX sneaks last year? It looks really familiar.
Quite nice. Thank you!
Great! Thanks!
Whoopos…Sorry.
I dropped just the JSX file in the panel, and not the folder like the instructions said.
It works fine now.
Can’t get it to work on CS5.5
Get this error
Other comment above said he got it to work in CS5.5
Error Number: 509
Error String: Invalid image data
Engine: session03
File: /Applications/Adobe lnDesign CS5.5/Scripts/
Scripts Panel/Humane_ Type.jsx
Line: 6
Source: var tlmagel = w.add(“image”, undefined,
File(myScriptPath+”t1.png”));
The above is OCR of pdf of screenshot – please excuse any errors.
For a quirky title on a book cover…. maybe. But if I did this for the interior, I’d have customers demanding a refund, thinking they’d gotten a misprint.
Brilliant!
I’ve been often adding some manual imperfections ever since I’ve started working with DTP apps (that must have been Aldus PageMaker 3, I guess), so this will be quite a time saver.
For the record: works nicely in ID CS5.5.
Perfect! or… Imperfect! ;D