Designing and building the world's largest unofficial archive of the Rotis font
I'm launching a new side project to bring a dream of mine to life
I’ve spent a good 18 months dreaming about this, and I’m really glad to announce I’m finally kicking it off!
What’s this side project all about?
My goal is to build the world’s largest unofficial archive of the Rotis font.
If we’ve had a conversation in the past about design, it’s pretty likely that at some point I’ll have mentioned a font called ‘Rotis’. If we haven’t, lucky you I’ve done a previous post on why I think it’s worth celebrating:
It’s not the first time I’ve published this collection on the web. I’ve been drip feeding them on my Instagram and had a dedicated page on my old personal website.
But a big ol’ grid of images no longer supports the growing collection of 33 examples and counting. I want to create a much better exploration experience.
How am I approaching this?
The old website was built in Squarespace. But I’m building the new one in an amazing tool called Framer. It’s like Figma for websites; combining pixel-perfect versatility with powerful optimisations for the web.
I’m also building it ‘in the open’. That means taking you behind the scenes of how it’s made, including creative direction and content management.
And most excitingly, future content will be crowdsourced! I’m building a way for people to contribute to the archive.
When might you get a chance to see it?
The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted from the cover photo that it’s already live!
It’s very very very basic for now, and is deeply lacking in ‘soul’. I’m next working on moving it to a custom domain and developing the creative direction. This involves deciding what the goals are for visitors and translating this into a look and feel that helps them enjoy the collection.
I need your help!
My chosen starting point for the creative direction is ‘timeless but not classical’.
I’m gathering up examples of products, services, websites, etc. that evoke this feeling on my mood board.
Do you have a suggestion for me to add to the mood board? I’d be so grateful if you sent it my way by replying to this email 📨 or commenting below 💬 Thank you in advance!
Stay tuned for the next post on creative direction 🧑🏼🎨
👉 The story continues in Part 2:
