ROBBIE: An Interactive Novel

Robbie is a short story written by Isaac Asimov, and first published in 1940 under the title Strange Playfellow. Lucas Mosesson used the text as the starting point for creating a book with an experimental layout, set entirely in CoFo Sans Mono. The project was made as a student project at Lycée Camille Claude, a design school in Blois, France. Lucas comments:

The project ROBBIE: An Interactive Novel reimagines the structure of a conventional edition by opting for an interactive approach that renews the reading experience. It highlights the human dimension through design and interaction processes that involve the human hand. Scratching, cutting, tearing, pasting, unfolding… the interactions are numerous and serve to illustrate the story through gestures, actions, and movements rather than images. This reedition invites the reader to become an actor and shape the narrative through their manipulations. The project establishes connections with current issues related to technology and robotics through a science fiction narrative that encourages reflection. All of this is contained within an ephemeral book whose degradation is necessary to fully enjoy the experience.

The typeface selection is related to the main themes of this work: Isaac Asimov’s short story Robbie revolves around robots and technology! For me, CoFo Sans directly recalls the early digital fonts derived from more traditional typewriter typefaces. This allows for a blending of the human and digital dimensions, with a font that simultaneously exists in the past, nostalgia, present, and future!

Furthermore, it is particularly effective when applying rules and grids to achieve stricter compositions. At times, one might even have the impression of seeing lines of code or script. CoFo Sans is also useful when it comes to make patterns or typographic effects with repetitive characters.