Benedikt Gross and Joseph Lee, the same designer-geographer duo who heroically documented all 43,123 pools in Los Angeles, now want to catalog the entire planet—but this time, instead of all those crystal blue drought offenders, the pair is on the hunt for all the buildings in the world that resemble a letter from above. This special typeface, they decided, would be called Aerial Bold. (ha.ha.)
So how will they actually do this? First, Gross and Lee will use OpenStreetMap, a vector-based open source mapping tool that'll let them identify building shapes efficiently. Next, they hope to get permission to use satellite imagery from Google Maps or Bing to retrieve the structures' true appearance. As Alissa Walker at Gizmodo points out, there's actually been a similar effort to find "accidental typography" in Google Maps, but one thing that makes Aerial Bold stand out is that all the typeforms will be geotagged, so we'll know exactly where these "letter buildings" can be found. Gross and Lee hope the geotags can spur typography or design enthusiasts to create localized typefaces, using buildings from just one city or country. Interested in helping the cause? The Kickstarter campaign is right this way.
The Kickstarter video:
· These Two Guys Want to Turn The Entire Planet Into a Typeface [Gizmodo]
· All Computer Projects posts [Curbed National]