“Censorfont” is a project developed in cooperation between the professorship of Image-Text-Conception and the NGO Reporters Without Borders in 2020.

From Reporters Without Borders, we learned that the freedom of the press is limited in many parts of the world and that numerous critical journalists worldwide face censorship, political persecution, imprisonment, or worse. Reporters Without Borders raises awareness about this situation and tries to help imprisoned and persecuted reporters through their global network and political actions.

To support that commendable work, Hanna Hofmann, Lina Unger and Anna Lina Weiß created “Poynter Censored” which Hanna and Anna Lina later developed further, renaming it “Censorfont”. The idea behind it is to use type – journalists’ most basic tool – to convey the problematic situation around the censorship of the free press. “Censorfont” is a variable font that censors itself while typing. Its visual origin is “Poynter regular”, a font that is often used by newspapers. The students programmed a website where people are able to write texts with the font, eventually experiencing the disturbing effect of being silenced. A poster series teases the project in public spaces.

At the 2021 ADC Talent Award, “Censorfont” was awarded a Golden Nail by ADC Germany.