Anyone who has always wanted to create their very own typeface should visit the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz in the coming days. At the bauhaus.labor, Jean Böhm, a student in the Gutenberg Intermedia master’s program, is presenting his project“OTF: Open Type Face”to the public through October 18.
Drawing inspiration from historically significant original typefaces on display in the exhibition“ABC. Avant-garde–Bauhaus–Corporate Design,” Böhm was particularly fascinated by the Bauhaus and its surrounding milieu’s approach to systematizing and simplifying typefaces: After all, typefaces such as Herbert Bayer’s“Universal”and other sans-serif typefaces of the 1920s, such as“Futura,”revolutionized the use of type in a lasting way.
Today, however, the drive toward generalization is countered by an ever-increasing pursuit of individualization—a trend that Böhm addresses with his customized typefaces. Thus, at the bauhaus.labor, visitors’“data”—characteristics such as facial features, age, emotion, etc.—are combined with situation-based information to form an individual dataset that serves as the basis for generating a personalized typeface.
At the bauhaus.labor, visitors have the opportunity to influence the design process of their very own typeface through their own interactions—such as facial expressions and gestures. A camera captures facial features using machine learning and analyzes them in real time. Finally, the complete typeface can be generated, is available for download as an .otf file, and becomes part of the exhibition at bauhaus.labor.
Also, please note: The custom typefaces can be generated not only on-site at the bauhaus.labor but also at otf.bauhauslabor.de—and they, too, will become part of the Bauhaus exhibition.
bauhaus.labor: A collaborative project between Mainz University of Applied Sciences and the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz.
