The app – which is available to download for free – is the latest project from ex-Fontsmith founder Jason Smith, who sold his foundry to Monotype earlier this year. He’s worked together with designer James Henderson and coder Steve Jones to build Wordilly, which lets users type in messages, and then experiment with how they look in different fonts and colours. There’s 20 different typefaces on offer, which range from stencil and inline styles to classic serifs and san serifs.

According to Smith, after years of writing “mood messages”, and then screengrabbing, cropping and sending them to Instagram, him and Henderson came up with the idea of making something that would streamline the process. Obviously it also draws on Smith’s experience with type, and its ability to instantly change a message’s tone of voice.

Wordilly is straightforward to use, making it easy to try on different fonts, as well as edit the layout of a message. It clearly has the potential to become a hot favourite with prolific social media users or, indeed, anyone that has a motivational quote or message they’re keen to make an impact with.

More than that, it opens up the world of type – which can be inaccessible at the best of times – to a whole user base of non-designers, giving them the power to make decisions about what looks good, and then create it themselves.

wordilly.com