crowdfund://0xC3b592A587a972b467E797C9755fE0b45a5c5ceE?version=factory_5&network=mainnet

Started in January 2021, Monogaga is a new contemporary display typeface with a reverse high-contrast, extreme inktraps and bubbly terminals giving it a funky and unique personality. Its quirkiness and eccentricity are features that make it distinct and memorable.

As a Web3 enthusiast and emerging designer, I wondered how blockchains and web3 technologies could impact typeface design and distribution, and I decided to try something: crowdfund the production of a type family in exchange of tokens, $MONOGAGA.

The tokens are going to represent ownership of the typeface, and Monogaga will be released free for personal use.

The supporters of Monogaga will receive a commercial license of the font, and will get free updates as I add more weights to expand the family and add more languages support.

As co-owners of the typeface, the backers will also receive 50% of the commercial licenses sales and will be involved in the design process.

Motivation

I decided to release Monogaga as a community-owned project to experiment with a new way to fund and design typography projects, find a way to build a community, and explore what a crypto-native typeface looks like.

Usually, type designers work alone on their projects and sell their fonts either independently or with type foundries, but I would like to explore a new model where the designer gets paid as they design the typeface and share the profits of their work with their supporters. It could help compensate the tedious and lengthy effort of designing type, while creating a community wishing for the success of the typeface as they will also get a financial return when the typeface will get more popular and used.

How it works

The crowdfund is looking to raise 17 ETH in exchange for 50% of the commercial licenses sales. Monogaga will be 100% owned through its social token, $MONOGAGA. For ETH contributed, backers receive $MONOGAGA at a rate of 100 $MONOGAGA per 0.1 ETH. All token holders will have access to private discord channels in my server and will have exclusive access to the fonts prior to official release.

Each semester, I will be responsible for converting the commercial licenses payments to USDC, and the holders will receive an amount of USDC based on their share of $MONOGAGA supply.

I will also provide transparent reporting on all income generated from the typeface.

Use of funds

I’m looking to raise 17 Ethers that will be used to fund:

• Design & production of the type family

• Marketing expenses

• Website development

Projected Timeline

(**Subject to change**)

Sept. – Nov. 2022: Finalization and release of Monogaga Display Heavy

Nov. 2022 – May 2023: Production of the Light, Regular, Medium and Bold versions

May – Sept. 2023: Production of Monogaga Arabic

Sept. 2023 – later: Depending on the demand, I will start working on the Cyrillic, Greek or Tifinagh versions.

Why would someone want to own this typeface?

Participating in this crowdfund can be a way for you to support an independent creator, express your taste on-chain, receive a part of the typeface profits or be a part of typographic history.

Also I think its cool to say “I participated to the creation of the first crypto-funded typeface” (:

About Monogaga

With its unique, groovy and strong personality, Monogaga could be used for logos, musical/cultural projects, visual identities, tattoos, and more. I personally love it because it’s bold, original and loud (:

Currently at 494 glyphs, Monogaga supports 80+ Latin based languages. It also has some OpenType features such as character alternates and MANY ligatures (currently 99 and I plan to design ✨more✨).

Monogaga is a fun typeface and I can’t wait for it to be released to the world, thanks to your participation!

The Monogaga NFT Collection

To immortalize the creation of the first crypto-funded typeface family, I’m also going to sell individual glyphs as NFTs. I used Manifold to create a custom contract and listed the collection on Foundation.

I spent a lot of time creating each glyph and I think creating NFTs of them could be a nice way to showcase their individuality (:

They are listed at 0.111 ETH each, except the genesis (a) that is listed at 0.222 ETH.

I’m excited about this project and I hope Monogaga will be the first step of a new future for independent type designers where they leverage crypto to monetize their art as they work, and share their revenue with their early investors and supporters!

My Discord server is where I will publish the typeface updates and the downloadable files, so I invite you to join it! (:

https://discord.gg/TKnzTfwm5K

About me

I’m an Ivorian artist and designer currently based in Abidjan. Some of you might know me for Zouzoukwa, a project I created to promote African cultures through emojis. My work has appeared in The New York Times, It’s Nice That, The Guardian, CNN and other media.

I learned Type Design during my first year of Master’s Degree at L’École Supérieure des Arts Visuels de Marrakech, and if Monogaga is funded I may go back there for my second year and write my Master’s thesis on the impact of web3 on Type Design. (I’m currently on an academic hiatus because I had a burnout)

You can find me on Twitter at @OPlerou, on Instagram at @oplerou.studio and on my website at oplerou.studio. My ENS address is oplerou.eth and if you want to drop me a message, my email address is contact@oplerou.studio :)

Thank you for being involved in this typographic adventure!

Additional References & Inspiration

https://e.mirror.xyz/cuJ-6Ksevx9QuV5peOcw5lpDYVLbPEY5pumZprr8L1Y

https://j.mirror.xyz/uVGCCwwm3k341lPpxaJmHTZROESVse9Pe_rmbiuUAC0

https://www.monotype.com/resources/expertise/nfts-and-type-industry

https://www.nftype.site/

“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”— Thomas Sankara

Created as an illustration project to change the stereotypical and negative narratives within and about Africa, Zouzoukwa is dedicated to promoting African cultures through emojis and onboarding people from the continent to crypto & web3.

Tell me the first three things you think about when you hear “Africa”.

If your answers include “war, hunger, corruption, poverty”, or “safaris, animals, poor-but-happy-kids”, you are the reason why I’m working on Zouzoukwa.

I do not blame you, it may not be your fault; I’m not judging you, – even if actually… I am, just a little 💀 – but if you still see Africa as a monolithic concept where poverty is everywhere and its people need to be saved, then there’s a lot of work to do.

Don’t worry, we will work on this together. We will use all of the tools we have today – hello web3 – to foster a generation of self-sovereign individuals proud of their identities, building powerful communities, and creating a new narrative for the continent.

Say gm to Zouzoukwa.

(gm)

Background & Genesis 🌱

My name is O’Plérou, I’m an Ivorian artist, designer, and creative explorer. Born and raised in Côte d’Ivoire, a beautiful country in West Africa. I like to draw, create things and explore ideas: sometimes for the sake of creativity and experimentation, and others times to try to move towards a better future for myself and others.

If you were to meet me at an event, I might seem shy, I’m still interested in my environment to learn how things work and see how I can participate in my own way.

Africa’s Representation and its Impact

At some point, I started to notice many things that I did not like about how Africa was represented in the media: the negative stereotypes, the one-sided portrayals of Africans. I noticed how it affected my fellow young Ivorians. They were not interested in their own cultures and tried to be copies of the West. They risked their lives to go abroad for a “better life”, whatever that meant.

I could not remain unaffected by these circumstances and I kept thinking about how I could change things, or at least try. And one day – long story short – a thought came to my mind: "What if I made emojis?”

A Daily Emoji Project

Even if it sounded silly at first, I liked the idea and immediately gathered resources to learn how to create a emojis (aka YouTube, thank you ✨internet✨) and created the first one, Zaouli. It looked nice, and since I know that I tend to start many projects and never finish them, I decided to try something different this time, a self-initiated challenge: Create a new emoji every day of 2018 and publish it on social media.

And I did it. (yeah I’m bragging 💀)

The project was cool, light-hearted and fun: it felt different to see cultural elements in that way because Africa is usually not represented in technology. It even attracted the attention of the international press and articles were written about the project and me.

It was funny for people to see me create ordinary elements, and during the project they wanted to actually use the emojis in their conversations. So I watched some more ✨YouTube✨ and managed to release an app that made the emojis usable as stickers on WhatsApp and iMessage. It was like a gift to the community to thank them for their support, and it was pretty well received: the app was downloaded more than 10k times in the first week, and Play Store currently shows more than 100k downloads. 🥲

After the Challenge: Abyss & Despair 💀

A lot of cool things happened when I completed the challenge, — a Wikipedia page, a New York times write-up, brand collaborations, support from the Ford Foundation — but I still wasn’t really satisfied with the project’s outcome.

The project was dependent on Instagram, and social media is not the best way to learn about the represented elements. I wanted Zouzoukwa to promote the entire African continent, but most of the emojis I made were about West Africa. My main source of information was the Internet, and I was the one in charge of representing cultures I don’t belong to.

Above all, I realized I was building a community project alone, and I couldn’t even find ways to incentivize others to join me on that adventure.

[dramatic & sad piano music 🎼]

I stopped publishing anything, lost followers every day, ghosted the audience, and basically disappeared in April 2020.

But in 2021, I found a sparkle of hope.

Web3 🌐 : A World of ✨Infinite Possibilities ✨

In February, I saw an article about the sale of Nyan Cat NFT, and the vision I had for my life and future changed forever 💀.

They sold?? A Digital Artwork? For hundreds of dollars? I quickly got interested in NFTs, how they worked, what they’re part of, and from there I fell down the rabbit hole. 🐇

This new world where people actually get rewarded for the value they create was exactly what I needed for Zouzoukwa. And as I learned about the ecosystem (especially thanks to SC03🌱), the direction of the project became more clear now: Zouzoukwa should become a DAO.

AfroGen Z x Culture x Crypto = Zouzoukwa DAO

DAOs are organizations of people gathered towards a goal, and Zouzoukwa’s mission is clear: Onboard people from Africa to web3/crypto, create emojis & content to promote culture and have a positive tangible impact on the continent. And as a result, change the way Africa is perceived.

We will start a community of thinkers, builders, creatives, and storytellers; collectively building the great Africa we want to see, funding & creating public goods that benefit ourselves and the web3 ecosystem, and becoming active participants in the crypto revolution.

What’s next and how you can get involved

To turn the mission into reality, we are going to need funds: to hire developers to work on the DAO products, to reward the early contributors and supporters, to allow the core team to spend more time on the project [I’m currently the only one full time] and to teach people about this new ecosystem.

Mirror Crowdfund and $ZOUZOUKWA Collection NFTs

To participate in this adventure and be an early supporter of the movement, you will soon be able to back the DAO Genesis Crowdfund on Zouzoukwa’s Mirror, and buy the original 365 emojis of the project on Foundation.

Stay tuned by following Zouzoukwa on Twitter and join the Discord Server 🌍 to be amongst the firsts to know about the release dates.

See you there! ✨

https://discord.gg/jFPBy8dq8s

Today I decided to try a little experiment: mint multi-editions of lost artworks restored with AI, and use them to start a token-gated community.

During my crypto journey, I read a lot of articles and attended many courses to learn about the space and try to see where I could fit: I explored NFTs, social tokens, DeFi, and recently DAOs.

Seven months after the beginning I realized I had made many mistakes, but today is an attempt to ~start over the NFT adventure with the knowledge I have now.

Let me introduce to you MMXVII Collection: the meeting point of Art, AI and Social Tokens.

The Art ✨

The collection is a selection of 5 digital paintings made in October 2017, representing how I felt during that period. Bones, Flowers, Planets and Symbols were elements I was drawn to, so I added them to my work.

Unfortunately, the computer where were the original HQ files of the artworks died so I no longer have them. 💀

The only ~memories of the pieces available today are the posts I made on Instagram but the quality is not excellent because the files are compressed.

This is why I decided to restore them using Artificial Intelligence.

AI & Digital Art Restoration 🥲

This is the first time I have used AI in my work. It felt weird because I didn’t know how the result would look like since the website seemed to be focused on photos, but the result was surprisingly good! The AI-created pieces are slightly different from the original ones, but I LOVE how detailed they look.

Digital Art Restoration is not something I thought seriously about until now, and I’m thinking about creating a series of low definition artworks to see how AI will edit them… But for now, let's talk about the token part of this experiment.

The Token 🪙

Social tokens are a way for creators like me to interact in a new way with their community, and I had to create one to explore Web3 possibilities fully.

If you often read articles on the Creator Economy x Social Tokens, you might have seen the “Imagine you could invest in Taylor Swift at the beginning of her career” example to explain how early fans would have earned value from her success with her, if she had a token. Well, I am your Taylor Swift 💀💀💀

On a more serious note, I think I have a lot of potential and it would be cool if we grew together ~ [here’s a link to my Tellie if you don’t know me and want to know what kind of things I do] (:

Utility

The token will be used to gain access to my Discord Server, where I will regularly post updates about what I’m working on + early access to my creations. My current priority is Zouzoukwa, but I have many other ideas too – and you could vote for them in a token race on Mirror✨ –

Tokenomics

I minted 7,000,000 $OPLEXUS, and I will airdrop them to my collectors, supporters and first collectors of MMXVII pieces. I currently don’t know if I will create a Liquidity Pool at some point, but the token holders will be able to share their opinion on this, and we will all decide together.

Inspired by Mirror crowdfunds, I will send the tokens at a ratio of 10,000 $PLEXUS to 1 ETH. For example, if you buy an edition at 0.07 eth you will receive 700 $PLEXUS, and if you buy 3 at 0.17 eth you will receive 1700 $PLEXUS.

Let’s F***ing Go! 🔥

The Collection

I originally listed the collection on OpenSea to save on the gas fees, but I finally decided to use Rarible to deploy a custom contract for the collection.

Important if you're planning to do something similar: don't be fooled by the "lazy minting" option, as soon as you mint on your own contract, the option is no longer available 💀

Imagine how hurt I was finding that only after spending $600 in fees 💀🥲

Link: 🔥 MMXVII Collection on Rarible 🔥

5 artworks – edition of 10 - 0.077 eth 2 close-ups – edition of 25 - 0.033 eth

Sooo… What’s next??

First thing first, I’ll go back working on Zouzoukwa 💀

I will be thankful for the collectors because having some funds + a community will help me promote my next projects. I easily generate ideas but choosing which one to focus on is difficult for me, so I can’t wait to leverage the power of a community to have people believing in me and helping me select the right ones.

https://twitter.com/OPlerou/status/1450189838922158081

I also think it could be exciting to create a collective like the “Warhol Factory” or “Haus of Gaga”, to work on creative or random projects together, in a Web3 and decentralized way.

While the long-term goal is not well-defined yet, this NFT collection will serve as a first step in building a strong community around my art and projects. I couldn’t encourage you more to purchase a piece of this collection and be part of this exciting project. 🔥

Further Reading

(you’re ngmi if you judge some of my sources)

https://future.a16z.com/creator-before-community/

https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/social-tokens-and-creator-centric

https://www.artlife.com/inside-the-factory-the-studio-where-andy-warhol-worked/

https://ladygaga.fandom.com/wiki/Haus_of_Gaga

The MMXVII Playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/189L1FaOxkuacaAX6cjnLQ

Big thanks to Eliot for editing the article & Louis for his feedback! 🔥

Curiosity is what led me to web3, and it is one of the most exciting, exhausting, motivating and inspiring adventure I ever lived — and I’m here since only 7 months!

Being a $WRITE race finalist is a BIG step in that web3 exploration, and I’m grateful for everyone who voted for me. I will use Mirror to share my crypto & creator journey, document my creative experiments, and crowdfund projects I have, starting with Zouzoukwa.

See you soon!