The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2023
Free Press Unlimited's 'The Erased' font erases words so readers see censorship happen
On World Press Freedom Day 2023, Free Press Unlimited launched a font that erases one word per imprisoned journalist from news sites, making censorship visible.
Free Press Unlimited
What it had to solve
Free Press Unlimited, a Dutch NGO that defends independent journalism, wanted people to confront news censorship and the journalists imprisoned for their reporting — 363 at launch. Censorship usually happens invisibly, with readers never seeing what editors cut.
How it works
Most news censorship is invisible: editors cut words and readers never see what was removed. Free Press Unlimited, a Dutch NGO that supports journalists under threat, wanted to make that hidden loss visible — and to point at the 363 journalists imprisoned worldwide at the time for doing their jobs.
The idea was a typeface. 'The Erased' used ligatures to drop specific words from copy as it rendered, with each erased word linked to an imprisoned journalist, so participating news sites showed readers the holes instead of hiding the cuts.
Agency 180 Amsterdam developed the font with Free Press Unlimited and released it openly, so newsrooms anywhere could deploy it without manual downloads or edits. It launched on World Press Freedom Day in May 2023 with a demonstration text carrying 363 erased words — one for every imprisoned journalist.
The effect was that censorship stopped being abstract: readers watched words disappear from real articles. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive as 'The Erased', and the font later spread into more languages as other outlets adopted it.
Why it lands
- It made the reader experience the loss rather than hear about it — the erased word is the proof, no argument needed.
- Ligatures did the work inside the font engine, so any newsroom could deploy it and no one had to edit articles by hand.
- Tying each erased word to an imprisoned journalist turned a statistic — 363 — into a structure the audience could feel.
- Launching on World Press Freedom Day gave the idea a news hook and a reason for outlets worldwide to take part at the same moment.
What it did
Participating news websites worldwide ran copy with words erased in front of readers, making the suppression tangible, and the typeface later spread into more languages. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive as a way of making news censorship visible.
What you can take
To make an invisible problem visible, put its effect in the medium itself: a typeface that erases words turns every reader's screen into proof that censorship exists.
Since then
The Erased gave Free Press Unlimited a reusable tool: because the font was released openly, other newsrooms and eventually more languages could keep erasing words to demonstrate censorship. The campaign moved through the awards circuit — including the D&AD archive — as a reference for making suppression visible. It did not end censorship by itself; its lasting value was turning an abstract threat to press freedom into something a reader could watch happen in ordinary text.
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