Meet Spector, The Ingenious Little Device That Can Capture And Identify Any Font In The Real World

By Ksenia on July 20, 2016

Wondering what this chubby, little, charming device is for? Meet Spector. Spector is a great helper if you need to catalog the fonts and colors you see anywhere offline. It can identify very precisely fonts and capture hues and all you have to do is a single click.

Designer Fiona O’Leary is responsible for solving this great problem which all designers or simply font lovers have in a real world. In the matter of fact, the initial idea for Spector came from her frustration coming from this problem: “It never looks like it does on screen as it does in the finalized print,” she lamented to The Creators Project. “You have no idea of a scale of the page or typography and colors often visualize differently too. I came up with the idea if you are going to design for print on screen, why not start with print material? And why not make it interactive?” Besides Fiona, one more person is involved in the creation of this practical handheld device – designer David van Gemeren.

And how does it work? The device has a built-in camera that photographs the sample of the text and then an algorithm translates that into information you can use—such as the RGB/CYMK values in hues. What you can get is more than just the name of the font; color, size, kerning, leading, and even an info where you can purchase it.

Spector is a prototype for now and has some strict limitations (it must be 48pt font size or less and captured right-side-up), but O’Leary is working on it and plans to get it on the market once it’s done, in about two years via Kickstarter.