Design Quarantine To-Do: Make Your Face Into a Typeface

Ever wondered what your face would look like as a typeface?

… Neither have we. But thanks to Overtone and Set Snail’s passion project Your Typeface, now all of our faces can be typefaces—and it’s actually a pretty cool tool.

Your Typeface merges variable font tech with face recognition (the Beyond Reality Face SDK framework, specifically) to give life to eight master typefaces that are transformed on three axes. In other words: Make expressions on your webcam while using the program, and the type responds and adapts. Once you’re happy with your design, the system uses fontTools to automatically output a .TTF that you can then download and use however you’d like for free.

“Designing in the variable font structure reveals some new possibilities and it also reintroduces a certain amount of randomness that we’ve all been longing for in the world of digital type design,” Overtone senior type designer Rasmus Lund Mathisen says. “When designing Your Typeface … the characteristic detail/quirkiness added a lot of surprising output through the steps between masters. The typeface got a life of its own, and we really embraced that.”

Give the tool a try here.