Meet Words of Type, a multilingual online encyclopedia for typographic terminology.
The WoT project, currently in development, is the brainchild of Lisa Huang, a French and Chinese typeface designer specializing in Latin and Hanzi (Chinese) scripts. Her typography expertise comes from her studies at Type@Cooper in New York, Type Paris, and TypeMedia in The Hague.
Huang started Words of Type to disseminate and share typographic knowledge across cultures better and to nurture the global type design community. Working with a team of language experts, illustrators, web designers, photographers, and graphic designers, Huang hopes to bring the Words of Type to life as a valuable and accessible resource for people who work with typography.
Illustrations by Erik van Blokland
Illustrations by James Graham
Illustrations by Tezzo Suzuki
Huang also created a custom typeface for WoT. In keeping with the reference theme, Scholar Round is easy to read and digest, and heavily influenced by the rounded typefaces used in school books.
The project launched a Kickstarter campaign (recently ended) but has also found partners in companies and type foundries to help fund the development effort. The online reference’s initial phase will have 200 terms and be available in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, with more languages planned. Check out the Words of Type website to preview what’s to come.
While Huang knows that Words of Type is far from THE only typographic source out there, Huang hopes that WoT becomes a favorite sidekick for typography students and teachers, professional designers, and type enthusiasts.
Learn about Huang’s work on her website or Instagram (@hellolisahuang). To read more about Words of Type, It’s Nice That has a thoughtful interview with Huang about the project.