The One Show
The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.
Learn more about The One Show 2026
Category
Craft - Typography - Single or Series / Typography - Single or Series
Annual ID
DE16266M
About the Work
What do you get when you first see someone? If every face is an article, will you spend more time to read them? We took the original typography from the traditional typewriter to close the gap between today and the disposable age. The making of Typeself involved tearing up, decoding, and hacking five typewriters to lead the words to deconstruction. We explored different system fonts by scanning and dividing the characters to finally pick one as our original font model. We then programmed these individual elements to allow the machine to automatically type the characters, using them as the brushstrokes to create the unique combinations that form the portraits. In more than 300 hours, we witnessed how the complexity and the simplicity of our words and their characters form our images. Typeself was a journey that makes us realize maybe we are all just simple characters being put together.
2016 Awards
Total Points: 5
Merit
Credits
Agency
Wieden+Kennedy / Shanghai
Art Director
Northy Chen
Marula Vaz
Creative Technologist
Edward Jiang
Ashley Cheung
Designer
Sui Yao
Northy Chen
Photographer
Sui Yao
Marula Vaz
Related Awards
