True to type: Short film highlights the potential of web fonts

Berlin – Long ignored, typography is now coming into its own as graphic art, appreciated outside of the inner circle of font geeks. And although we often see explorations of typography in indie magazines, FontFont enlisted Stark Films to create a short film to visualise the potential of its catalogue of web fonts.

The video, entitled Mice, Ants and the Lazy Dog, plays on the well-known pangram, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, to demonstrate all of the different letters of the alphabet in a variety of FontFont’s web fonts, which now have OpenType features – which means they are much more flexible for designers.

‘We started with the classic pangram as a way to deconstruct the aesthetic elements of the typefaces from the meaning of the words,’ says Brian Papish, producer at Stark Films. ‘We were interested in rendering this specifically online product in physical materials and not as computer animation, and we felt it would reflect the fun creative aspect that the new options in online OpenType fonts will present designers.’

The different fonts on display feature aesthetics similar to our Sonic Landscapes design direction, while the video itself takes on a playful tone that is reminiscent of our Flatforms design direction.