The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2020s
Morten Halvorsen turns Parkinson’s progression into a living typeface
Morten Halvorsen built a typeface from his mother’s Parkinson’s handwriting and planned annual versions to show how the disease changes it.
Morten Halvorsen
What it had to solve
The project needed to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease and its early signs while protecting the identity of a writer whose handwriting was diminishing. The design had to make progression something people could see.
How it works
Morten Halvorsen wanted to create awareness for Parkinson’s disease and its early signs. His mother had been living with the disease for eight years, and her handwriting was diminishing as the condition progressed.
He turned her handwriting into Shake, a typeface that allowed her to keep writing in her own hand. The project also proposed releasing a new version of the font every year, using the letterforms themselves to show change.
Shake made a personal record into a public awareness tool: the same person’s handwriting could remain recognisable while its gradual transformation became visible to others.
Why it lands
- It made an abstract medical progression tangible without reducing the person to a medical diagram.
- The source material was intimate and authentic: the designer’s own mother’s handwriting.
- Annual releases turned one static design into a time-based record of change.
- Letting the handwriting remain usable preserved continuity and agency alongside the awareness message.
What it did
The disease’s progression became a designed artefact: the writer could continue using her own handwriting while audiences could encounter Parkinson’s through a changing font.
What you can take
When an invisible condition changes a person over time, a designed system can preserve agency and make the progression legible through repeated, accumulating versions.
Since then
The D&AD archive records Shake – The Typeface With Parkinson’s Disease as a graphic-design project built around annual evolution. Its lasting idea is a font that can document progression while preserving the authorial trace of the person living through it.
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