Media Monks produced an app which allowed them
to encompass the worlds hand writing to create a universal standard of letter
forms, and created a typeface out of it.
'Typography meets typology in this handsome
experiment that harnesses the world’s handwriting to bring about a global
average. In celebration of the most popular pen in history, DDB Tribal
Düsseldorf set out to create a typeface that could be considered as universal
as BIC’s world-famous Cristal ballpoint pen. The idea was to crowdsource
handwriting contributions from around the world and combine them into a single
typeface that could be explored through various demographics. Our pretty
experiment managed to crowdsource more than a million contributions in less
than a month and continues to evolve as more and more people take up the pen to
join in.'
Their idea uses an app which allows users to draw letters, which when combined and layered, the company take and overall average created the most standardised letterform.
The application allows the user to draw the
letters on their smartphone, translating the data to your computer where it
uploads it to the database of other letters. Then the results are displayed,
much like seen below. The orange lines represent the average out of all the
ones completed.
The concept behind the 'universal typeface
experiment' allows for a universal typeface to be made. However it is
restrictive in the qualities it has, as it doesn't include any form of digital
typefaces. It relies solely upon hand written letterforms which act very
differently to digital letterforms. This may not necessarily be a bad thing,
and it is what the experiment is trying to achieve, however it would be
interesting to see an attempt of combining both digital and hand written
letterforms.
Where the experiment is really let down, is the
lack of incorporation of other languages. Yes it becomes a universal typeface
for English speaking people, but it does not do the same for the other 95% of
the world who do not speak English as their first language. Is there a way of
incorporating other languages? Or making the app universal to allow for the
same outcome to happen in other languages? What might even be interesting is
moving away from individual letterforms and getting the audience to write words
or phrases, which layer up just as before, creating an average for the lines
drawn. Would the outcome still be legible?