Someone made theme songs for fonts and they're pretty great
New York composer Miriam Daly wrote and recorded music for fonts. The songs are a Courier for Impact-ful melodies that are definitely worth your Time(s New Roman).
- Patrick's play The Cowboy is included in the Best American Short Plays 2011-12 anthology. He co-wrote and starred in the short film Baden Krunk that won the Best Wisconsin Short Film award at the Milwaukee Short Film Festival.
The unique qualities of the fonts we read every day are rarely appreciated. Composer Miriam Daly wanted to change that, so she wrote and recorded theme songs for a bunch of fonts -- and they're fantastic.
"I had opened up the Font Book on my computer a while back and was stunned to see how many fonts I had, and how some of them had such distinct personalities," says Daly, who lives in New York.
Miriam Daly finally gave fonts their due by composing music for them.
She then set out to write music choosing styles and instrumentation that reflected the unique identity of each font.
"I would have the font displayed on my computer screen, and then start sketching out the music, seeing if I liked how the sounds I was creating matched the character of the font," says Daly.
If the resulting music didn't feel right, she'd set it aside to revisit in the future -- which she did for Helvetica, Papyrus and Comic Sans, perhaps the most controversial of fonts.
The results of her work are 20 theme songs, each about a minute in length and each a singular expression of a font's character. Lubna Caps, for example, has elegant curlicues, which are mirrored by a playful yet sophisticated melody. Then, there's her tense and foreboding music for the font Hitchcock, which makes you feel like you're watching one of the great director's suspenseful films.
A still from Miriam Daly's video for the font Joystix.
But Daly didn't stop there. She created fun video animations to go with her songs, too. The visuals, like the music, were another way to express a font's character. The animation for the font Joystix, for example, looks like a 16-bit video game.
Daly studied classical piano growing up and went to the Eastman School of Music and NYU for musical theater. She now works as a freelance musician on original musicals and is composing music for an independent film. For her next project, Daly wants to try her hand at writing music for video games.
Feedback about Daly's font theme songs and videos has been positive with the most effusive praise coming from her 5-year-old nephew, who liked them because they made the alphabet fun.
To listen to all of her font theme songs, as well as her other work, check out Daly's website.