Dinamo Face Filters: 2019-2020

Type, at least for the moment, feels like the right medium to apply our ideas to, ideas that usually stem from non-type related influences in our lives. In some cases, our engagement with type has led us to creating products like toothbrushes or fisherman hats, but most recently, we’ve been developing a face filter collection. Venturing out of the traditional confines of the type design field and into contemporary media is not just an exciting opportunity for play, but it helps invigorate us with fresh perspectives when we’re back at the type design drawing board.

We launched Dinamo Face Filters in 2019 to explore the face filter medium and collaborate with AR and VR artists working in the field. After inviting our favorite 3D artists over to our studio for coffee and cake, we began to dream up concepts together, throwing ourselves into technology entirely alien to us. We’ve published numerous filters to day, many of which you can read more about below or download via our Instagram page, designed in partnership with Moritz Tontsch, John Sampson, zweihundertkilo, and Tabitha Swanson.

Acupuncture

Wellness and self-care are hot topics at Dinamo, so we couldn’t resist when the Zurich-based design student Sophie Becker approached us with an idea for an acupuncture-themed face filter. Tap once to receive the deep healing of the magical needles, and tap twice to light them up with lime green tips and incandescent purple sparkles.

Concept: Sophie Becker
Development: Sophie Becker

Variable Font Cube

VariableFontCube teases Dinamo font-in-progress ABC Arizona, designed by Elias Hanzer, by combining variable font and face-tracking technologies. Open and close your mouth to slide a blue and yellow cube featuring ABC Arizona letterforms between sans and sans serif, and explore every step and genre in-between the two.

Development: Alberto Guerra, Roberto Alesi, and Alessandro Caccur
Typeface: Elias Hanzer and Dinamo

!!Good!!Morning!!

Designing typefaces requires one to break the cycle of laziness—or as the German expression goes, you have to overcome your inner pig (“innerer Schweinehund”). This is one of many reasons why all of our fonts contain the Dinamo Pig mascot. You can join the sty with !!Good!!Morning!!, a filter designed by art collective zweihundertkilo, which allows users to expand their pig-self from a Mono to Extended by yawning.

Concept: Dinamo
Development: zweihundertkilo

Mood Mask

To announce the release of ABC Favorit Hangul virtually, and to coincide with our exhibition in Seoul, we partnered with Pentagram senior designer John Sampson to develop Mood Mask. Tap through seven different ASCII moods typeset in ABC Favorit Hangul and overlaid on your face in the form of a protective, bear-shaped surgical mask. Some might say the filter was ahead of its time…

Concept: Dinamo
Development: John Sampson

SOFTENER 2k20

After our trip to Seoul—and our discovery that Korean beauty sheet masks really are the best way to care for your skin while flying—we developed our second face filter with 3D artists Moritz Tontsch: SOFTENER 2k20. We hope it’ll help us to remind ourselves and others of the rejuvenating potential of moisture retention.

Concept: Dinamo
Development: Moritz Tontsch

EyeZ BreAkeR

After going down a rabbit hole reading about the Thatcher effect, followed by an evening spent photoshopping our eyes onto our faces upside-down, we asked art collective zweihundertkilo to develop a face filter that inverts a user’s eyes for unnerving selfies.

Concept: Dinamo
Development: zweihundertkilo

Type-Face

Type-Face literally superimposes a glowing, rainbow array of type on a user’s face, which labels facial features from chin to forehead in our ABC Favorit. Like an instant camera translation, you can also tap the screen to translate the text, jumping between ABC Favorit’s Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Hangul versions.

Concept: John Sampson and Dinamo
Development: John Sampson