Typography is, basically, ment to communicate. When using written text, the design of the font you use adds characteristics to the communication. On the other hand, there's verbal communication. The big advantage of verbal communication is that it's not static. Volume, intonation, body language, facial expression, etc. continuously add character and emotion to the reader's words.

Now I went looking for a way to make a dynamic font or to use the expression in a person's voice (or a sound) to animate written typography. Outcome is a font that distorts itself to support the emotional and characteristical impact of the reader's voice.

Next step; I created a face (smiley) out of typographical elements as you might know them from instant-messengers and chats. By using different elements I gave the face different emotions between which the application morphs to get an interaction between the spoken input and Frank. That way, Frank became a 'living' type-face (pun intended).

The smiley on the screen seems very much alive when you talk to him and I thought it was very appropriate to give a 'living' person a name. It became Frank, just like that, for no particular reason.