What it had to solve
Reflect what the full moon represents at the Mid-Autumn Festival — the reunion of family, resilience and togetherness — in a form people can actually use, not another decorative mooncake box.
How it works
MoonFace comprises 26 letters, 10 numbers and 20 punctuation marks, released as a free download so anyone could spend the festival 'conversing in moon'.
What it did
No uptake figures reported. The font turned the festival's central image into a working tool anyone could type with.
Background
For the 2021 Mid-Autumn (Moon) Festival — a celebration usually marked with colourful lanterns and mooncakes in ever-more-elaborate boxes — Fred & Farid Shanghai took a different route: the agency designed a new typeface inspired by the shape and rotation of the moon.
MoonFace includes 26 letters, 10 numbers and 20 punctuation marks. Each letter is surrounded by a circle to indicate the complete state of the moon, and the changing axis represents its rotation and 'the infinite angles behind it' — a reminder, in the team's words, that like the moon, we can shift and refresh ourselves in a cyclical process.
The font was released as a free download, inviting people to spend the festival — whose full moon stands for reunion, resilience and togetherness — literally conversing in moon.
Why it lands
The design encodes the festival's meaning — cyclical renewal and togetherness — into the mechanics of the letters themselves.
Making it downloadable turns a studio exercise into a gift: every message typed in MoonFace carries the greeting onward.
It sidesteps the mooncake-box arms race entirely, competing on usefulness rather than packaging.
What you can take
A cultural moment is best served as a tool: give people something to make with and the festival greeting writes itself.
Since then
MoonFace was released for download during the 2021 festival week. No download or usage figures were reported.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The sources
- Communicating by the moon aws2.campaignasia.com