Liquid Type

Words poured into a field of metaballs. Type up to a few lines and they are set as a halftone screen whose dots fuse and part as they approach — on a plain ground, on one of the Lake Opeka loops, or on a picture of your own. Opeka Type and Metatype were the same instrument twice; this is the one instrument.

Client

AHA Time
×
Chicago Graphic Design Club

Medium

Tool

Year

2026

Acknowledgements

Values — a poster exhibition
Featured in

OP/AL
Built by

0:00

1080 × 1080

Text

Source

Text size 104

Letter-spacing -6

Line-height 116

Position X 0.50

Position Y 0.50

Dots

The letter printed as a halftone screen of dots (exactly like OPEN LAB) — the dots are the letterform. Color them, then add colored blurs below.

Cell 32

Contrast 15

Size jitter 75

Blur dots 23

Connect 13

Dot color

Glow layers

The blurred dots that sit behind — a soft colored aura made of the dots themselves. Displace each layer off the dots for contrast. Stack as many as you like, color each.

Motion

Wave 15

Glow drift 0.28

Speed 2.7

Field

What the words are poured onto. A flat color, one of the eight loops cut for the Lake Opeka record, or a picture of your own run through the record's own process. Your picture is never stored anywhere.

Color

Accents

A share of the dots take one of the record's eight colors instead of the dot color. At nothing the field is one ink; turned up, the metaballs fuse across colors and the necks blend.

Share 0

Output

Tool commissioned for the Values poster exhibition