This handheld gadget is the Shazam for fonts

Fan of fonts? Tied up in typography? Crazy for kerning? 

Then meet your new hero, Fiona O'Leary, and her wonder gadget, Spector: a small cylinder that can identify any printed font, font size and colour, just from placing it on a piece of printed work, before opening them automatically on InDesign.

Yep. No longer will you flick through magazines and think "Bloody hell, that's a gorgeous bit of sans serif going on there, wonder what the font is", because with Spector, you will know. 

As the video above demonstrates, with a Spector in your pocket you can gad about town taking 'snaps' of fonts, "allowing various print materials to become interactive". A small camera sits in the base of the cylinder: you place the Spector on the printed font you want to identify, capture an image, which Spector then transmits to a database of fonts and colours. It can store up to 20 samples for you to upload once you've connected it to a computer. 

A student of the Royal College of Art, Spector is O'Leary's graduation project. Which means no, it's not for sale. Yet.

Go on O'Leary - satisfying the desires of designers the world over and make this a reality. A Kickstarter? Please? You'll be worshipped as the font of all knowledge...

(Image: Via Vimeo)

[Via: Wired]