COMIC SANS
The easiest way to piss off art directors is to use Comic Sans for every email, message, and homemade birthday card you send them. Graphic designers hate the font, but the rest of the world still seems to like its whimsy, which is what inspired artist Jesse England to hack a typewriter with typeface. A laser engraver was used to create a new set of Comic Sans letters out of acrylic, which were then painstakingly glued onto the strikers of a classic old manual typewriter. Jessie even labeled the keys with a vinyl cutter to make custom key covers. But Jessie didn’t actually create the Sincerity Machine —as he’s dubbed it— to drive people nuts. People without graphic design skills (or taste) use it to ensure a message isn’t taken too seriously. It’s still ugly. Sorry.
DYSLEXIE
Dutch designer Christian Boer created this dyslexic-friendly font to make reading easier for dyslexics like himself. He writes;
“Traditional fonts are designed solely from an aesthetic point of view, which means they often have characteristics that make characters difficult to recognize for people with dyslexia. Oftentimes, the letters of a word are confused, turned around or jumbled up because they look too similar.”
Designed to make reading clearer and more enjoyable for dyslexics, it uses “heavy base lines, alternating stick and tail lengths, larger openings, and semi cursive slants” so that each character has a more easily recognizable, unique form. Boer has recently made it available for home users to download for free. Once installed, dyslexic readers can use the font to type, print documents, read email, or browse the Web. Boer says that studies from the University of Twente and the University of Amsterdam support his claim that Dyslexie helps both children and adults with dyslexia to read with fewer errors. I’m not dyslexic but I still prefer it to Comic Sans.
The post A Certain Type: A Comic Sans Typewriter + Dyslexic-Friendly Characters = Font Fun! appeared first on World of Wonder.