Perwolf - A web-based font randomization tool


Inspired by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum’s playful philosophy during the process of creating the first RandomFont typeface, Beowolf, in 1990, the web-based type randomization tool Perwolf was created. Unlike Beowolf, the tool applies a particular noise texture—Perlin noise (created by Ken Perlin in 1983)—to the outlines of the characters in the input text written in any imported font (consequently "converting" it to an outline font in the process) based on the user-defined parameters (intensity and scale of the noise texture) and generates a downloadable Scalable Vector Graphics graphic. Depending on the defined parameters, the output can vary from slightly distorted but still readable letters to heavily abstracted expressionistic forms. Just as with Beowolf, the outlines of a particular letter will never be the same twice and are therefore completely unique in every iteration.

By default, the display font is Fanwood Regular (by Barry Schwartz), used due to its relative resemblance to Beowolf without the randomization. The transformation is achieved using the JavaScript libraries p5.js (created by Lauren McCarthy), opentype.min.js (by Frederik De Bleser), and p5.svg.min.js (by Zeno Zeng).


Created by Matija Resman with the guidance of Prof. Pierre Pané-Farré and Simon Thiefes as a semester project for the Co-Op Monday course at HAW Hamburg in 2024.