Blue Shark Serif - A Sharktext Generator

A website and associated typeface to generate intricate shark-themed text. Input any message and return a better, sharkier version of whatever you wanted to say.

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Inspiration

We were first inspired by the llama font project, and believed its philosophy could be extended to other domains. The BLÅHAJ was also a source of guidance on the project, both for our choice of topic and approach to design.

What it does

The bluesharkserif.online site allows users to take text and convert it into a fun shark-themed font. All characters in the English alphabet have been represented, allowing for a wide-array of messages and uses. This gives users access to our custom font, Blue Shark Serif, without the need to download anything or commit to a new font on their computer. Blue Shark Serif is also available as a functional TrueType-format typeface, and will work with most third-party programs that read fonts from the computer (e.g. word processors) for users interested in creating shark text offline.

How we built it

The website was built using the React framework and hosted with Firebase. The font was created by using Inkscape for the vector art and FontForge to create the TrueType file.

Challenges we ran into

Allison: Creating a stylized website is always a fun challenge, and designing a mascot for our site involved a few iterations using a few different design tools. We also tried to add dancing sharks, which was eventually successful under James's eye. Neither of us had experience collecting a domain name, and then associating that domain name with our hosted site, so this presented another challenge. We're still not sure if it's accessible through our domain name, but feel free to check out bluesharkserif.online if you'd like! Otherwise, use this link to access a properly functioning version of the site.

James: Creating a readable, clean, and quick-to-create font made out of sharks was also a challenge. We're proud to have developed representations for all alphabetical characters, but were unable to add numerics, punctuation, or other special characters for now. We also had not created a font before, which required a good deal of research and experimentation before we got a working version.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're super excited that we were able to make our own font, as well as give people the opportunity to translate their words into sharks!

What we learned

This was our first time making a font from scratch, and had to learn a lot about the pipeline to make that work. We also learned about setting up DNS records for websites.

What's next for Blue Shark Serif - A Sharktext Generator

Adding numerics and special characters is high on our priority list. There's also some janky spacing and kerning issues that can be fixed for updated releases.

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