What are Kinetic Fonts?
Kinetic Fonts are a category of typography where both the type design and the concept of movement are integral to the creation process and remain essential during the usage of the font. Through exchange with type designers, these four points have emerged:
Categorization: Kinetic Fonts are a subcategory of typography
While Gerrit Noordzij defined typography in his book “The Stroke” as “writing with prefabricated letters,” this also applies to Kinetic Fonts. However, in Kinetic Fonts, not only the shape is predefined, but also the concept of its movement.
Condition: Kineticism is embedded
Movement is embedded in the font file, within technical and conceptual limits.
Concept: Every glyph has a choreography
Movement is conceived at a local level, at the level of the individual glyph.
Practice: Designed to move
During the ideation, design process, and use of a kinetic font, the concept of movement takes precedence at every stage.
Why Kinetic Fonts matter
Kinetic Fonts are built on the idea that a font is not only a static carrier of text but also a medium of visual transformation. While variable letterforms offer shape transformation, they are conventionally designed to give users more flexibility in selecting static variations. The idea behind Kinetic Fonts, by contrast, is that they are primarily designed for movement. Even though these fonts, from a technical standpoint, can not move by themselves (like static fonts, they require an interface to do anything at all), the conceptual blueprint for movement is already embedded within the font file. The concept of local kineticism, introduced by Barbara Brownie in her book “Transforming Type,” describes movement conceived at the level of individual glyphs, combined with the integration of how a letter should move into a font file, forms the basis for the term “Kinetic Fonts.” In observing existing projects, many fonts that integrate movement are still labeled as “experimental variable fonts.” This manifesto aims to provide a clear definition to distinguish Kinetic Fonts as an autonomous category within type design and to enrich our collective understanding of what they can and should become. In this way, these fonts which were confined to their experimental sandbox can now step into the spotlight as fully recognized Kinetic Fonts.
Feedback
Ongoing process
This manifesto is a living document and will be updated as the field of Kinetic Fonts evolves. Feedback and
contributions from the community are welcome to refine and expand upon the ideas presented here.
Background (text to be revised)
Hi, my name is Simon Truffer. I started this project as part of my bachelor thesis, where I explored how type can be designed for movement when motion is not applied afterwards but is integrated directly into the font itself. This initial research laid the foundation for what would later evolve into the concept of Kinetic Fonts. You can read the bachelor project here: Kinetic Font – Type Moving Forward↗. As an outcome, I created a draft that I shared in an online document, where invited type designers could provide feedback and help shape the manifesto.
With contributions from
Edgar Walthert↗, Font Spectrum↗
Travis Kochel, Future Fonts↗, Vectro↗
Lena Weber↗, MonoModular-Typefoundry↗
Anne-Dauphine Borione, Daytona Mess↗
Arthur Reinders Folmer, Typearture↗
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to shaping this manifesto.