The CROWDFONT will be released in three different weights. Of course the version I started working on, but also a light and bold one – or thin and black, you name it. So technically the regular version’s stems are about 75 units thick, whereas in the light one they’re 25 and in the bold one 125. Actually…
During the voting process I asked for decisions on a lot of various parameters. But actually all technical ones, none regarding the look and feel of the font. Should it be quirky or straight or conveying something in between? That’s why I decided to go for stylistic alternates. So depending on for what you’re going to use…
In the course of the exhibition “Subtext: Typedesign” that takes place at Vienna’s designforum there will be several lectures given by great type designers. And one by me about the democratization of type design – and the first comprehensive presentation of the first democratic typeface. Save the date 08.05.2017 19:00 / 7pm designforum Wien And don’t…
About two tweeks ago, a conversation between type.today and two Swiss typefaces’ designers popped up here. Ian and Emmanuel are pretty clear about the future of type design, as they say: If you want to design anything for a document or whatever, there are already a lot of typefaces, so why design new ones? That is…
CROWDFONT is not only about type design but also about democracy. It’s about simulating today’s democratic processes in a smaller, artificial setting and with a strong visual approach to make it easier to understand for the mass by removing any political messages that are nowadays strongly connected to emotions. It’s about experimenting with democracy’s principles in…
Christmas is already ahead and the single characters are slowly taking shape. At the moment the lowercase character set is almost finished, though it’s more about the letter shape and proportion than about a perfect optically corrected character. In the beginning I wanted to finish the font in December, but as usual everything takes a…
Nearly every graphic designer is into grids. The reason is simple: They establish a rhythm, define proportions and provide balance. Grids are all about order and harmony. As you picked a monospaced font, there’s – in contrast to proportional fonts – also a grid behind. Whoop! Monospaced, or also non-proportional, means that every character (including some…
To set up a time table including the most important milestones of this project, I needed to define, what the CROWDFONT should actually be in the end. A font? A typeface? How many glyphs? Which format? As it should be ready-to-use for the common end-user my aim is to create at least one font that…
This week I started with some rough drafts, experimenting with various widths and stroke weights. When designing a monospaced typeface, the lowercase m and i are two tricky points as the first is normally one of the widest characters and the second the narrowest one. But – together with the white space around them – they…
Several people – especially via email, but also in the comment section of various blog posts promoting the project – asked me, what the idea behind CROWDFONT is. It’s not about creating the perfect typeface for text and display usage. There are already tons of typefaces, that are on point for any application you can think of.…
The first round earned – thanks to a bit of a buzz – the most votes and asked you for your opinion about the font’s basic parameters. Let’s check’em. This wasn’t that much of a surprise, as – especially users who aren’t that familiar with typography – serif typefaces are often associated with some old-fashioned book…
The first round’s decisions were almost easily predictable, but the second afforded surprises. This one changes the whole thing. The monospaced font is an interesting choice, as the look is normally linked to something technical or (even worse) old typewriters. But the crowd seems to embrace that and you’ll get what you want. The…
In the third round we went more into detail. Let’s check what these results mean for the final font. First, the majority voted for a left slanted font. As backslanted fonts are extremely rare, it’s a surprise that so many people liked it. I would rather have said it’s going to be right slanted than…
First of all: A huge thank you to all of you who participated in CROWDFONT’s first phase. I was utterly impressed by the number of voters, which definitely exceeded my expectations. More than 40,000 single votes have been counted. This means the project got a great base to build on. In the next few weeks…
