Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 new books are published every year. The classics have a lot of competition and none is considered to be a “must read now”.
The Reading Association of the Philippines (the third-largest English-speaking country in the world) wanted to encourage people to rethink them.
BBDO Guerrero came up with a clever solution, a collection of original display and text typefaces called Font Books, each of which is designed to reflect the character of a classic story and hides a free download of that story in both eBook and audiobook formats.
Instead of the usual font preview that is typically used – mostly, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog – Font Books uses excerpts from the novels that inspired the fonts, such as It was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day! (Moby Dick) and One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. (The Metamorphosis.)
Font Books was launched on February 15 at Graphika 2020, one of the world’s biggest design events, with the fonts printed in a physical book that attendees could explore.
“We created these typefaces as a way to feature books in a new, non-intrusive manner, inspired by people just like myself who spend way too much time looking for free fonts online, and not enough getting into the classics,” explained BBDO Guerrero creative director, Michelle Edu, who came up with the idea.
BBDO Guerrero creative chairman, David Guerrero, added, “This is a labour of love and stealth by the team. Download a new font for free and get a timeless work of literature in the bargain. We hope it sparks off renewed appreciation for these great books.”
Eight font books are available so far on fontbooks.org – Moby-Dick, The Metamorphosis, The Time Machine, Kama Sutra, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Secret Garden, A Princess of Mars, and Peter Pan. Five more are scheduled to be released in the next week.
The idea is being promoted on Facebook and Instagram and people can share how they used the fonts using the hashtag, #FontBooks.
