This Weird 1973 Typeface Just Came Back From the Dead

Some typefaces age gracefully. Others disappear for half a century and come back looking strangely perfect for the internet.

Clippy definitely belongs in the second category.

The wonderfully odd typeface from Kanon Foundry is based on Paperclip Contour, a 1973 design by Ad Werner. Type designer Tor Weibull took its rounded, looping letterforms and transformed them into a full digital type family — and somehow, more than 50 years later, it doesn’t feel particularly old.

The original Paperclip Contour was pretty limited: lowercase letters, numbers and basic punctuation, all in an outlined style. Clippy fills in those shapes, adds uppercase letters and expands the family to 530 glyphs and 219 supported languages.

But the fun part is what happens when it moves.

Clippy uses variable-font technology to shift between upright and slanted forms, allowing the letters to rock backwards and forwards rather than simply falling into a conventional italic.

It’s typography with a mild balance problem.

And perhaps that’s why it feels so timely. After years of extremely polite geometric sans serifs dominating digital design, weird typography is fun again.

Would we use Clippy for the body text of a banking app? Probably not.

Would we build an enormous homepage headline around it?

Absolutely.

More than 50 years after Paperclip Contour appeared, its wonderfully strange letters may finally have found the technology they were waiting for.

Alex Harper

Alex Harper is a web designer and UX specialist with 8+ years of experience creating intuitive, user-friendly digital experiences. Known for blending creativity with functionality, Alex helps brands turn ideas into seamless designs that engage and inspire.