There is a little store on a quiet little street in Copenhagen called Playtype. Playtype sells fonts, yes those little letters we use when we type an email or see when we open a newspaper. They have a whole store which opened last December that sells 200 or so fonts.
If you think there is no life in fonts think again. There was a documentary in 2007 (a hit apparently ) called Helvetica and even suggestions of an iTunes ap for fonts where you can buy them for a dollar. There are currently over 150,000 fonts in the world and a lot of businesses that specialize in fonts, but none have a store front.
The store was originally only planned to be in place for a limited amount of time but because it has turned out to be a success they are thinking of keeping it. The partner and strategic director of the company behind the store (as you can expect a company that creates fonts) Rasmus Ibfelt said in an interview in Monocle magazine (issue 47) “Sometimes, it’s important to do something which doesn’t make sense.”
A lot of the innovations that are inspired by sustainability start off a little bit like that and then become so normal that we are amazed no one thought of them sooner. I wish people did that more often.
