Explore the uncanny valley and embark on a journey of unpredictable type creation.

During this workshop, participants will learn general prompting techniques for instructing text-to-image AI models. They will then use this knowledge to instruct various custom models to create their own fonts. After an exploratory phase, participants will end up with a cohesive set of co-created letters and present them through type specimens.

In the field of type design in particular, exploring how AI can be applied to the design process is relevant, as no viable or mainstream solution has yet been defined, and exploring this space freely leaves room for truly new ideas. We have developed a pipeline for text-to-type generation based on the open source Stable Diffusion model, presented through an easy-to-use interface. This allows our participants to explore AI in the type design process without being overwhelmed by technical details and without being locked into inaccessible technical solutions from Big Tech.

By opening up this field for experimentation, the workshop provides a playful and safe space for participants to work with and explore artificial intelligence in type design practice.

The workshop is based on the research of Paul Eßer's type table and Francesco Scheffczyk's research on the democratisation and accessibility of AI interfaces within the KITeGG research project.

un/learn ai – Approaching AI in Aesthetic Practices, the first publication of the KITeGG Research Project was developed by Lars Hembacher and myself as a web to print book. As part of a series of three publications it provides insights into teaching and research and presents results from winter 2021/22 to summer 2023. We developed a pipeline to split the text by semantic meaning. These chunks are then linked between articles based on the similarity of their embeddings. Readers can then read the book like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book and jump between articles in a non linear way. On the website the linking enables readers to build their “chunk-chain” and print their version of the publication in the order they jumped from article to article. The splits are visualised in the article by the shifting background gradient. Gradients are a huge part of the KITeGG Identity by Laura Hilbert and we wanted to incorporate a less colorful version while also keeping the loud character of the CI. The publication is divided into three sections each with their own color and generated font.

Green: Project foundations, lab infrastructure and team introductions

Blue: Teaching approaches and student projects

Orange: Research findings and symposium contributions

The AI generated fonts used in the cover and hero pages were made using the type table project.

For my bachelor thesis I developed the type table as an experimental tool for generating typefaces with AI. It uses a custom-trained Stable Diffusion 2.1 ControlNet which is trained on glyph skeleton pairs. I build a script with fontParts and fonttools convertes the images output by Stable Diffusion into a font. Users can download the fonts from the website The inputs on the touchscreen interface are kept minimalistic to enable users without design or AI knowledge to use the table intuitively without being overwhelmed. Users guide the model with sliders for font-weight, roundness and roughness and a button for the random seed.

Unfortunately the model overfitted quite heavily. In the future I would like to train again but therefore I would need some time to adjust the dataset and GPU hours. In the workshops we also built tools using Inpainting which worked more accurately and were generally better received by the participants.

The publication hybrid publishing systems brings together 14 projects developed in the Hybrid Publishing course at Mainz University of Applied Sciences 2023. In addition to the various projects, it contains essays, research results and a glossary on the topic of hybrid publishing. In this context, hybrid stands for multimedial, the separation of content and medium that enables cross-media publishing. The principle of hybrid publishing is not only reflected in the content of the publication, but also in its form and realisation - the printed publication is printed from the website using Pagedjs. It uses Media Wiki as a collaborative Editor and a VueJs frontend. On the website visitors can build their own book with only the articles they want. As part of the Student Exhibition 2023 we hosted "Hybrid Publishing Hub+Café" with a printer for diy publications.

For the Bachelor and Master Exhibition Communication Design Mainz 2021 Annabel Regenstein, Nils Trenner and I developed the identity Aus'm Häuschen. The homonym of the german words for "out of the house" and "euphoria", is used for the Exhibition of works that were created at home during the covid 19 pandemic. The playful identity consists of seven characters which accompanied the graduates through their studies. We developed the CI in the course "Exhibiting in the Cloud". It was selected out of six groups and then realised with the help of the other students. Due to the regulations at the time the LUX exhibition space could not be open and the works were shown on screens along the windows.