Dinamo brings back an old school internet challenge to launch serif Gaisyr

Dinamo has just released its newest typeface Gaisyr – a serif inspired by sketches from the early 18th Century royal typographer for King Louis XIV, Jacques Jaugeon. To celebrate the release, the Swiss foundry is bringing back a time-honoured tradition of the internet: mixing Diet Coke and Mentos and filming the hectic aftermath.

All the essentials are there in Dinamo’s version: the Diet Coke (personalised with Gaisyr, of course), the static camera at approximately knee-height, the Mentos, the excitement of an incoming explosion.

“The idea for the campaign comes from our fascination with TikTok and YouTube culture,” says Dinamo co-founder Johannes Breyer. “I also once visited a geyser during a trip to visit my family in Chile when I was a kid, and people were roasting chicken on the steam coming out of the holes. We thought that Gaisyr has serifs that sprout out like a geyser, so the idea emerged from there.”

The campaign was designed in collaboration with Sascia Reibel and Mathias Lempart from Shortnotice Studio, with Tina Lehmkuhl on video editing.

Dinamo likes to create distinct identities for each its typefaces through campaigns. “It’s about creating a world around a font,” Johannes explains on the Dinamo site. “We’re trying to create the seed of a narrative.” In 2022, the agency illustrated two Where’s Wally?-style characters for the release of Walter; the characters were drawn at different ages to represent the families Walter Alte and Walter Neue. More recently, Dinamo released a playful set of typographic toothbrushes for its tenth anniversary.

You can learn more about Gaisyr over on the Dinamo site.