Universal Typeface Experiment
The Universal Typeface Experiment was a promotional website funded by Bic, the maker of the Bic pen. The website crowdsourced a typeface with mobile users who entered their handwriting on the website using a touchpad and the then newly updated BIC pen called the Cristal Stylus, which included a touchpad-friendly rubber tip. About 1.7 million characters were submitted to the website, and the resulting typefaces were published in 2014.
Also recorded as theuniversaltypeface.com
Universal Typeface Experiment
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- Germany
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The Universal Typeface Experiment was a promotional website funded by Bic, the maker of the Bic pen. The website crowdsourced a typeface with mobile users who entered their handwriting on the website using a touchpad and the then newly updated BIC pen called the Cristal Stylus, which included a touchpad-friendly rubber tip. About 1.7 million characters were submitted to the website, and the resulting typefaces were published in 2014.
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wikidata · Q18707686 · wikipedia · Universal Typeface Experiment
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Key facts
Key facts
• Website Type — Promotional • Owner — Bic • Creator — MediaMonks, Tribal DDB • Advertising — Bic Cristal • Launched — 5 June 2014 • Current Status — Defunct
Setup
Setup
The website was launched on 6 June 2014. On the first day, about 8.000 people entered their handwriting. Though it was possible to participate using one's fingers, writing with a pen was significantly easier. Notwithstanding this difference, the website offered the contributor the opportunity to sign in and answer some demographic questions, enabling automatic aggregation of statistics about handwriting that sparked an article in the Smithsonian magazine. In this averaged handwriting experiment, the user was presented with 26 capital letters of the uppercase Latin alphabet in random order in the Arial font. On the website, users could compare their own writing with the whole repository. The website, hosted by Tribal DDB and developed by the Dutch ad agency MediaMonks, was originally intended as a product launch and was scheduled to be taken down in August 2014, but the site was still live and accepting contributions until 2016. It won the "Site of the Month" award by the Favourite Website Awards (FWA) in 2014. In the end, over 1.725 million characters were submitted through the website. In late 2014, the resulting typefaces, average of all contributions, were published, split by country, gender, left- and righthandedness, sector and age. Although the website is not available anymore, the typefaces were uploaded to the Internet Archive.
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- Germany
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Universal Typeface Experiment is associated with Germany.
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Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.DDB Düsseldorf & BIC's 'Universal Typeface' Now Available to Download. Little Black Book online. 2014-11-10.
- 2.Bic goes from ballpoint to digital to create a 'universal typeface'. Digiday. 2014-06-09.
- 3.Stamp, Jimmy. The Universal Typeface Project Averages the World's Handwriting to Produce an Incredibly Average Font. Smithsonian Magazine.
- 4.Selfstorming. Bic: Universal Typeface - Campaign Analysis.
- 5.Rhodes, Margaret. This Typeface's Letters Are the Average of the World's Handwriting. Wired. 2014-07-03. 1059-1028.
- 6.The Universal Typeface Experiment. theuniversaltypeface.com.
- 7.Universal Typeface on FWA website for July 2014
- 8.Société Bic, MediaMonks. Universal Typeface Experiment fonts. 2014.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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