I was late to join my local (Upstate NY) AIGA chapter, and even later to hop on the chapter’s Slack list. Deplorable, I know, but I tried to make up for it by proposing a collaboration: a group mashup typeface. Over 30 people contributed at least one letter, number, or symbol. I have never met most of these people, but on our #collab slack channel it felt great. We weren’t doing it to make money and people were given almost no restrictions (just had to be a vector file, in one color). So it was interesting to see how various contributors with a wide range of design skills – and maybe no type design experience – could come together virtually in a single file.
Is this practical? Probably not. Is it fun? You bet. Will we keep adding to it? That depends on contributors. I have an “open submission” policy on Slack, where we can continue to expand on alternates, which would make the text dynamic and even more exciting. It is free, an open source, and you can download it and view the full website by clicking through below.