Born from chance operation, experimentation and play, Counterplay is a typographic system that stimulates literacy through circus-inspired letterforms. The chance operation consisted of assigning three randomized constraints: content, medium, and audience being circus, interactive design, and illiterate people, respectively. The experimental process began with observing and translating the motion of circus performers to a notational system that informed the fabrication of the set of letters. Upon exploring physical and digital avenues of execution, we landed on creating an animated set of letterforms in the hopes of capturing the hyper-stimulative nature of the circus that would potentially encourage learning.