even the 2-storey ‘a’ and the binocular ‘g’ have handwritten origins. take a look at the carolingian minuscule and you’ll see both in a calligraphic hand. the same is true for cyrillic letters: they were all based on handwritten models. It is true that some were tweaked to become the cyrillic alphabet we are used to seeing today, but even the old poluustav models correlate quite strongly with the forms that are used today. To better understand where these letter forms are coming from, i’d recomment Vladimir Yefimov’s article on “Civil Type and Kis Cyrillic,” which can be found in Language Culture Type.

Every character has a largely chirographic, but also some lapidary*, origin. But the future? That’s up to us. And in something like the Cyrillic De, it might in fact be a good time to reform it (although pragmatically, always).

* Consider for example that the Greeks made entire letterform stems and such with single strikes of the chisel (see Catich).

hhp