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Generative Type
Rory Moon / Experiment

Generative Type

2024 Experiment CSS Typography

Overview

Personal project exploring CSS Houdini and variable fonts — typography that responds to scroll position and cursor proximity.

This started as a question: how much can type behave before it stops being readable? The project used CSS Houdini's Paint Worklet API to create typography that responds to the environment — scroll position shifts weight axis, cursor proximity shifts width.

The technical constraint became the creative constraint. Houdini is still behind a flag in some browsers, which meant the entire thing had to degrade gracefully to static type. That forced a cleaner base design than a JavaScript-first approach would have produced.

The experiment runs in Chrome and Edge with Houdini enabled. The source is public. It became a reference point for a conversation about what "responsive" means when applied to individual letterforms rather than layout.