Weird Type vs altDQ LACMA
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Weird Type
Create unique visual art by writing words in augmented reality. Type custom phrases and explore various creative modes to see your text transform in innovative ways. Record and share your AR text creations.
- Draw with text in AR
- Type custom phrases
- Multiple creative modes
- Record and share videos
- Multi-lingual input support
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Have you ever wanted to draw with words? Weird Type is an AR app that lets you paint with text in space! You can type your own phrases and pick from multiple modes and see your text in completely new ways. You can record videos of your messages and share them or save them to you camera roll. It's based on a series of AR experiments that the authors Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo have been posting to Instagram over the last few months. People kept asking, "is that an app?" Now, together with our collaborator Design Indaba, which helped produce this, we're packaging some of these experiments into app and we hope you enjoy them! The app is designed by Richard The, with iOS help from Ying Quan Tan, Robby Kraft, and Peter Sibley Note the app now supports multi-lingual input.
altDQ LACMA
Explore a groundbreaking 1986 digital art installation in an immersive 3D space. View artwork from all angles, revealing hidden code, hypertext, and behind-the-scenes stories of its creation.
- Immersive 3D artwork viewing
- Reveal related code and hypertext
- View artwork from all sides
- Explore dimensional photos
- Watch process videos and images
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April Greiman's Does it Make Sense?, created in 1986 for Design Quarterly is on display at LACMA's Digital Witness exhibit. The work explored the use of Apple's Macintosh computer to assemble a collage of illustrative assets and words -- delivered on paper, Z space implied. Now this work can be viewed in X | Y | Z space using a smartphone or tablet. Here are features to explore: tap the screen to reveal related code and hypertext tap again to turn them off see inside photos that have become dimensional witness this display on both sides of the artwork video and images on the back side present stories of the process of making of the original work
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: altDQ LACMA at Free against Weird Type's $0.99. altDQ LACMA also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 months). Weird Type's advantage is rating (4.9 vs 3.0) and ratings volume (814 vs 2). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
altDQ LACMA is free to download; Weird Type costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Weird Type holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Weird Type has 814 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Weird Type ships an update every 3 months, altDQ LACMA every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Weird Type | altDQ LACMA |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.9 (814 ratings) — better | 3.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 87.1% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 814 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 23 MB | 449 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Zach Lieberman | Isovist Limited (UK) |
Customer experience
Weird Type
altDQ LACMA
Bugs and requests
Weird Type
Reported bugs
2 issues- Orientation issues when sharing videos
- Inconsistent performance on older devices
Requested features
5 requests- Add support for more languages
- Allow custom font/color options
- Implement selfie camera mode
- Add audio recording capabilities
- Improve video export quality
altDQ LACMA
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Weird Type
No in-app purchases
altDQ LACMA
No in-app purchases









