KickHER
KickHER is a playful performance about the typeface LL Unica77 (Lineto). A self-built mini table football game in girly aesthetics reinterprets a male-coded game: orange and magenta figures, shaped like the female pictograms from public signage, play with a turquoise ball in a transparent box. A camera tracks ball, players and hands and generates a typographic field live. The border between orange and magenta follows the ball. The side in possession grows large, bold and turquoise, the other small and light. When hands reach in, the type turns italic. Countdown, goals and the final result appear as typographic screens. Developed by the three men of Team’77, Unica77 is here taken over by women.
Concept and Typeface
Topic
Our performance brings together football and type. At its centre is LL Unica77, developed by Team’77, three men, based on Helvetica, Univers and Akzidenz-Grotesk. It is considered neutral and objective. We show it playfully and from a female perspective.
Idea
A game of table football is translated live into typography, revealing the family’s range from Light to Black and from upright to italic. Borrowing from girly aesthetics, the game turns a male-coded sport into something else.
Realisation
The mini table football game is our own design: a laser-cut transparent acrylic box, with 3D-printed figures, handles and ball. The simple orange and magenta figures are shaped like female signage pictograms and play with a turquoise ball. A camera tracks the ball, figures and hands and controls the screen. Each match opens on turquoise with READY?, the two players, a countdown and PLAY!. During play, the screen splits into orange and magenta, and the border follows the ball. The side with the ball becomes larger, bolder and turquoise, the other smaller and lighter. Moving hands turn the type italic. A goal shows a ball covered in GOAL! in the scorer’s color with the current score. HALF TIME! marks the break, and MATCH OVER! ends the game with the final score and the winner. A kick-off whistle, looping stadium noises and a final whistle complete the match atmosphere.
Goal
The audience doesn’t just read LL Unica77, they play with it, revealing how versatile a “neutral” typeface can be. Once developed by three men, it is now taken over by women.
Performance
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Storyboard
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The storyboard maps out the full course of a match as a sequence of screens. Turquoise frames the game: READY? opens the match, the two players are assigned their colors, and a countdown leads to PLAY!. During play, the screen splits into orange and magenta, each half belonging to one player. Every goal is celebrated with a ball covered in GOAL! in the scorer’s color, together with the current score. HALF TIME! appears in a flip-board style, and MATCH OVER! closes the game with the final score and the winner. Throughout, LL Unica77 shifts between weights and styles, from Thin to Black and from upright to italic, following the pace of the game. Sound brings the match to life: a kick-off whistle starts the game, typical stadium noises run in a loop in the background, and a final whistle ends it.
Process & Build
We built the table football game ourselves in the Digital Fabrication Lab. The box is laser-cut from transparent acrylic. The figures, handles and ball were modelled by us and 3D printed. For the rods, we bought metal bars and cut them to size.
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Setup
The table football game stands on black fabric, which gives the camera an even background for tracking. A camera on a stand with a boom arm films the game from above. Two softboxes and a spotlight light the table evenly. The camera is connected to a laptop that runs the tracking and generates the typography live. During the performance, the output is shown on an additional screen.
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