Crystian Cruz Censorship has been mainly reported by factual narratives, resulting in a lack of engagement around this controversial topic. This context led to an exploratory practice-based PhD research investigating how visual communication design may contribute to provoking awareness of the consequences of censorship. To provide a unique look into censorship, this creative practice was centred on an interactive self-censoring typeface that emulates the experience of those directly affected by censorship by triggering a variety of distinct graphic effects over censored words in real time.
The resulting interactive typeface explores the potentiality of tweaking OpenType features to add new typographic behaviours and elevate typography as a storytelling medium. The originality of the font features, such as censoring or replacing words, demanded the invention of specific OpenType coding and a systematic approach to activate the four levels of censorship available in the font. Aiming to reach a larger audience, a Google Chrome browser extension was developed, enabling the self-censoring font to replace the default fonts of any website. Due to the interactive features, the typeface Censurativa has great potential to be used in gamification or support the creation of other artefacts of design activism, offering the means to discuss the efficacy of typography as a medium to provoke social awareness.