MANILA, PHILIPPINES — For the 50th anniversary of The Reading Association of the Philippines (RAP), it partnered with BBDO Guerrero to encourage the appreciation for classic stories through a collection of original typefaces called “Font Books”.
The concept was first introduced and created by BBDO Creative Director Michelle Eduwho submitted the idea to the adobo magazine LIA Young Creative Competition in July 2019. With a brief to create a campaign that highlights the power of books to boost the value of creativity, the “FontBooks” proposal won her a spot on the team that represented the Philippines at the international program, 2019 Creative LIAisons, as part of the London International Awards.
From an exclusive interview with Edu last year, she shared the idea behind the campaign. After seeing a font from teammate’s board, she realized how much advertisers are exposed to fonts and that the process of installing them would be an effective platform to introduce them to epic stories and classic novels. Hence, the Font Book. Her winning entry incorporates classic stories to samples of digital fonts to get art directors, copy writers, and the like to get intrigued by the story and pick up the book for themselves.
As the idea sat on the shelves for a few months, the campaign is now in full display as an initiative from the agency for The Reading Association of the Philippines (RAP). BBDO Guerrero designed a mix of display and text fonts, individually crafted to give a better appreciation and understanding for classic stories. Every free download of one of the fonts come with a copy of the classic novel that inspired it, in both eBook and audiobook formats.
Taken from the original concept from Edu, instead of the generic font preview that is typically used, such as “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” Font Books uses custom excerpts taken 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.)
The project was launched on February 15 at Graphika 2020, one of the world’s biggest design events based in Manila, with the fonts printed in an actual book that attendees could peruse.
“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,”says BBDO Guerrero Creative Director—and the art-based talent behind the work—Michelle Edu.
BBDO Guerrero Creative Chairman David Guerrero adds, “Thisis a labor 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.
Font Books is on Facebook and Instagram. People can share how they used the fonts with #FontBooks.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fontbooksph
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fontbooksorg/
