Heard an interview yesterday with the terminally kool Henry Winkler, who has dyslexia. He's co-authored a very popular series of books for young readers about a kid (Hank Zipzer) with dyslexia. In the interview he mentioned that one of the books had been set in a face designed specifically to be more easily read by people with the condition. I needed to see what that would look like:
Dyslexie was designed by Christian Boer. Dezeen magazine ran a short piece about it last fall. According to Boer, "With a heavy base line, alternating stick/tail lengths [stick ?], larger-than-normal openings, and a semi-cursive slant, the dyslexia font ensures that each character has a unique form.
"Traditional fonts are designed soley from an aesthetic point of view, which means they often have characteristics that make characters difficult to recognise for people with dyslexia."
Interesting that one of the core concepts behind type design since Gutenberg has been familial harmony & consistency among the letterforms, and that this ideal exacerbates the challenge to people with dyslexia. Dyslexie certainly wasn't designed with aesthetics in mind, but if it works, function before form.
By pure coincidence, the Dezeen page linked above also includes a link to this short stop-motion film illustrating the history of type. It was made by a Canadian designer (!), Ben Barrett-Forrest.
AND ANOTHER THING
Finally got around to unwrapping all that Deepdene I got last year. Project pending, depatils to follow...
AND STILL MORE!
Personal to D: sorry we didn't connect before you took off. Kept meaning to call but the kid kept distracting me. Have fun, talk soon.
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