01 - overview

Designing an app for a typeface

GIT 540 threw me into the deep end. The instructor warned us from day one that the 7-week timeline and breadth of tools — Figma, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign — would be a challenge. They were right. But the pressure was exactly what I needed.

The Type Persona project asked me to select a typeface and design a mobile app that embodies its personality. I chose Futura — a geometric, modernist typeface with a bold, precise identity that pushed me to design something equally deliberate and striking.Most of the learning happened through self-teaching. Searching for resources, working through tutorials, and trial and error — that hands-on pressure became the fastest teacher I've had in this program.

02 - ideation

Ten concepts, all centered on Futura

The first challenge was ideation: generating 10 distinct screen concepts that all revolved around the visual identity of Futura. This was harder than I expected. Every idea needed to be meaningfully different while still feeling coherent with the typeface's geometric, precise character.

Futura's identity — clean lines, strong geometry, high contrast, a certain modernist confidence — became the brief I designed to. Each sketch explored a different way to let the typeface speak through the interface.

03 - Low-Fidelity Sketches

Translating sketches to mobile

After generating 10 rough sketches, I translated every one into a low-fidelity wireframe in Figma. This was my first time designing for a mobile screen, and the shift in available space changed everything. Elements that worked on a desktop layout became crowded and awkward at mobile dimensions.

I had to make both major and minor adjustments to almost every concept. What looked clean on paper needed to be significantly reorganized once I was working within the constraints of a phone screen — a lesson that stuck with me for every project since.

04 - High-fidelity Prototype

From low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototype

From 10 wireframes, I selected the strongest concept and developed it into a full high-fidelity mockup — adding two new screens (a Start screen and a Text Mode screen) to complete the user flow. The jump from lo-fi to hi-fi was significant given the compressed timeline, but the constraint forced decisiveness.

The final design used Futura's geometry as a visual language throughout: strong diagonal racing stripes, bold black and red, heavy geometric letterforms, and a layout that felt as precise as the typeface itself.

05 - complex prototyping

Building a working keyboard inside Figma

The final iteration was the most technically demanding. Before this project, I had only used Figma for basic click-through interactions on desktop layouts. This project required me to learn Figma's conditional logic and component system to build something genuinely functional.

The result: a fully working keyboard within the prototype. Users could type individual glyphs or full sentences in Text Mode, and adjust font weight using the +/− controls — all within a single Figma file. Every key had to respond correctly in both modes, with conditionals handling the state changes between them.

06 - outcome & Reflection

Countless hours of work paid off

To this day, this remains one of the most technically complex prototypes I've built, and it fundamentally changed what I thought was possible inside Figma.