- It’s estimated that about 15 percent of the world population have some form of dyslexia. For these people letters and characters can appear flipped, rotated, and transposed. As a result, they have trouble decoding the system of lines, curves and dots that we perceive as written language. As its name implies, Dyslexie was designed make reading easier for people with dyslexia. And to look good doing it.
- Among its distinguishing features, the lower portion of letter has a heavy baseline thickness, weighting it down to help prevent it from flipping. Additionally, larger openings and spaces in letters make them more distinguishable from one another, as does the use of a very subtle italic on some characters. Characters that can appear identical when flipped, such as the lowercase b and d, have different elliptical curves with distinct slopes.
- The preliminary research that produced the typeface included a relatively small survey of 43 people, single-word tests, and one control font: Arial. While Dyslexie didn’t prove to increase reading speed compared to Arial, the test group did make fewer reading errors, and the designer suggests that the study could be expanded in the future to test speed and comprehension to further refine the typeface.
- Clearview [the bottom sign above] is another typeface designed to make a difference.
- Last year, New York City spent $27.5 million to replace 200,000 street signs with new, easier to read, mixed-case versions printed in Clearview, which was created way back in the 1990s specifically to be used for transit signage.
To learn more about Dyslexie, go here and here. For an in-depth look at Clearview, go here.
