As a little boy, I was punished endlessly because of my handwriting. I exhausted notebook after notebook, trying to make my letters obey the grids on the page. I could begin neatly, but before long the writing would collapse into hurried marks that looked, to the uninitiated, like another script entirely.
What stayed with me was not only the handwriting itself, but the way we tried to correct it. We assumed that more pressure would produce a better result. Years later, I realised that the real problem was speed. In school, I had learned to rush so that I could copy from a blackboard before it was erased. When I slowed down, my handwriting became clearer.
Reclaiming the Scribble
A Facebook group with the playful name “I don’t have bad handwriting, I have my own font” gave me a new way to see what I had once regarded as a flaw. It planted the idea that my handwriting could become a digital typeface of its own.
That idea eventually became Adiyekowe. The name comes from the Yoruba expression “Adiye kọ̀wé, oyinbo kà á,” evoking the scribbles of a hen that are difficult for even the Queen’s man to decipher. The expression carries humour, but the font also carries memory. It turns something that once attracted disdain into a creative asset.
Adiyekowe is therefore more than a handwriting font. It is an act of reclamation: a personal mark preserved in digital form, with all its irregularity and character intact. Its creation was a small act of defiance, balanced by humour and the simple pleasure of making something because I could and because I felt I must.
The Lesson Beneath the Letters
The process also reminded me how often we apply the wrong strategy to a real problem. We punish when we should teach. We hurry when we should slow down. We repeat familiar interventions even when they produce frustration and self-doubt rather than progress.
A human-centred approach begins by asking what shaped the behaviour in the first place. In my case, hurried handwriting was partly the result of an environment in which information disappeared from the board whether or not every student was ready. The solution was not simply more discipline. It was understanding the system that produced the habit.
This is the larger idea carried by Adiyekowe: what appears defective may contain a distinctive form waiting to be understood. Creativity can help us revisit old judgments, preserve personal memory and turn the marks of experience into tools for expression.
A Living Part of the Vic’Adex Identity
Adiyekowe now appears on this website as part of the Vic’Adex visual language. It connects the digital identity to an actual human hand and gives the site a voice that cannot be separated from the story behind it. The font will continue to find its way into selected literary and creative projects where that intimacy matters.
The question that remains is one I first posed when sharing the project: how often do we double down on the wrong strategies in learning, work, creativity and life? What might become possible if we slowed down, examined the system and worked with people rather than against them?
Read the original Adiyekowe reflection and view the font specimen on LinkedIn.