Eyes, Nose or Mouth?

Scott Lambert

“You can add two dots to anything and it becomes a character”

Scott Lambert describes himself as ‘a father of ideas, experiences, environments, interactions and three patient daughters’. He is the creator and custodian of an assortment of typography characters called The Typefaces. The Typefaces are inspired by letterpress printing and childlike observations. They are, simply, faces in type.

The Typefaces won a D&AD pencil in 2016, which is probably when I first fell in love with a capital E. The characters make up a children’s book, but of course, the book’s not just for kids. It’s “for the designer in every child, and the child in every designer”. The Typefaces can now be found ‘all over the worldwide interwebs’, their eyes, noses and mouths surprising and delighting us in the spaces around familiar letters.

So Scott, what are you going to choose – eyes, nose or mouth?

Eyes of course. You can add two dots to anything and it becomes a character.

It’s a simple game anyone can play. In that way, some have said The Typefaces encourages us all to look at familiar things in new ways, others have said it encourages us to look for Polar Bears.

Do you need to find your inner child to understand a real one?

In the right moment, a little dose of wit or irreverence can connect us to people of all ages, I’m as guilty as others of taking it all too seriously at times. It’s a liberating mindset for creativity too – being consciously naive can seem contrarian, but time and again we see ideas with child-like simplicity cut through the noise.

What’s your favourite letter?

If I know what’s good for me I’d say K. An uppercase B is usually pretty jolly and I love an extended Q, but I am British. Who doesn’t enjoy a little X now and again. But at the risk of sounding melodramatic, my favourite letter is one my late Grandfather wrote with his ornate script and indelible sincerity on that featherweight airmail paper that is seldom seen these days.

Scott Lambert, A Curate's Egg