WIEDEN + KENNEDY SHANGHAI: Typeself 2

Credits & Description:

Client: Wienden+Cheden
Product: Self-Promotion
Entrant: Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, China
Idea: Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, China
Production: Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai, China
Editor: Apr 24 2015 12:00am
Art Direction: Northy Chen (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Design: Northy Chen (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Interaction Design / Fabrication: Northy Chen (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Art Direction: Marula Vaz (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Photography: Marula Vaz (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Engineering: Ashley Cheung (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Design: Sui Yao (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Photography: Sui Yao (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Interaction Design / Fabrication: Edward Jiang (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Engineering: Edward Jiang (Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai)
Describe the campaign/entry:
We use an analog approach to visually present the image of Wieden+Kennedy Shanghai in the crazily digitalized environment of China. We choose a hacked typewriter to imply the provocative creativeness of Wieden+Kennedy’s culture stands, and turn people’s stories and their words into portraits.
And based on the implication and systematic usage of characters, we used strategic wordplay for the Chinese translation of Typeself. “???” is the Chinese word for “typewriter”. However, using similar pronunciation but different characters, “???” actually works to define our new visual system, literally translating to “hit myself” - exactly how we used our machine: by hitting the letters to create portraits of one’s self. 
The Typeself machine and the program will then self-generate a new typeself profile for each new employee who joins the WK Shanghai Office to keep the profile wall always updated.
Creative Execution:
The making of Typeself involved tearing up, decoding, and hacking five typewriters to lead the words to deconstruction. We explored their different system fonts by scanning and dividing the characters to finally pick one as our original font model. We then programmed these individual elements to allow the machine to automatically type the characters, using them as the brushstrokes to create the unique combinations that form the portraits.
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market:
In more than 300 hours, we witnessed how the complexity and the simplicity of our words and their characters form our images. Typeself has been a philosophical journey that makes us realize that, maybe after all, in this compacted world, we are all just simple characters being put together. 
In this instant era where everything can happen in seconds, portraits have turned into a disposable selfie culture. That’s why we looked into the original typewriter art. The typewriter art is inevitably inconvenient and time-consuming, but it undeniably delivers meticulous details, creates beautiful flaws and certainly brings a more emotional attachment.