Growing up, I hated writing.

I still do, but for different reasons. I am very stubborn, and one of the earliest displays of defiance was to hold my pen/pencil a different way. Had I grown up in the times of my parents there is a solid chance I would have ruler measurements beaten into my hands. Of course, I can't claim this as being particularly unique or even being the first in my own family - my sister has an un-orthodox handle as well (its quite ingenious really).
To this day I still receive comments about my seemingly 'wrong' grip, but in my defence - I would argue my grip is much more efficient and less effort.

Still, growing up writing was the bain of my existence. I never developed a 'style' and I was never compelled to write for the sake of it. I had one teacher that would make us write for an hour each day and inevitably I would be kept back over interval because I hadn't written enough. I stopped trying. Writing was a little pointless to me when I could type things out on my commodore 64 at 5x the speed. I remember that first day of school for the year vividly. Racing to see who is in your class, who would you sit next to? what room where you in? - my heart sunk when I saw I was in 'her' class. Mrs Crook. I knew she had it in for me, and her new age hippy style didn't mesh with my love for computers / technology. Her Classroom smelt like a mix of incense and straw. It was going to be a long year.

I can only speak for my personal experience from my home country - but we never had any emphasis given to crafting a signature. The defining scribble that can give you an ounce of personality on a page full of printed type. My first signature wasn't even a signature. It was just my name printed, with a fancy 'M' taken from my Standard 4 teacher - Sister Peggy (standard 4 is 9th grade, or 4th year under the new regime). The first time I laid eyes upon it I was fascinated. Years of practice and refinement were instantly obvious. It was one of the only report cards I remember liking because of the finesse in the printing. So I copied it verbatim.

Years passed and my involvement with a pen and paper never amounted to beyond scribbling notes down or planning a design. Certainly no short stories or vampire novels. Eventually I decided it was time I drop my whole name, and try and come up with some kind of 'identity' in my signature. I tried and tried, but nothing came out right. Holding a pen, no how I tried - just felt weird. So I turned to my limited design skills and tried to collect designs I liked, and more importantly why I liked them. The trends in web design were divided firmly in two. Seemingly American designers were going grunge with their designs. Textures and edges were organic. The design coming out of Europe seemed to employ more space, 45 degree lines and interfaces with masses of often pointless accents.

But still I came back to this single character. This lovingly crafted m. Like a knock-off Louis Vuitton bag, my version just wasn't quite right. I could not get the ligature right now matter how hard I tried. Along the way, it took on a life of its own, and when I realised a similarity with my nickname at the time - 'Marc 3' (due to being the 3rd mark in the group. I still maintained it was because it was the best of all the zephyrs) with an uppercase B - I had my hook. And slowly my signature evolved from information to an expression.

But, like my pen grip - there were complications. Changing your signature has many consequences. Passports, Bank cards, Documents galore - all had to be changed due to the radical departure of my scribble. I had several problems over the next few months when older signatures didn't align with my new one. Thank god courier workers don't care about such things (I may never have been given many many parcels).

The second problem stemmed from the shape of my signature. Portrait. Not landscape. Trying to fit my signature on the strip of a card was near impossible. (As an aside - the general layout of the backs of credit cards are one of my biggest pet peeves. but more about that later.) From this common constraint, my signature has evolved again. More evolution than revolution - but always an expression. And now, I even enjoy signing it, sometimes filling a whole page full of them and then picking out my favourite like some kind of OCD 'Where's wally'. To everyone else, it still remains nothing more than a scrawl, a symbol of intent. An artistic 'Marc was here'.

As Evan Esar once said 'A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.'