I was browsing on my iPad this morning before peeling myself out from under the doona and hurling myself into the cold and miserable rainy day Sydney had to offer, and this article from LD Online grabbed my attention. Which is a pretty mean feat pre-caffeineation. Well done LD Online!
Now if you didn't follow the article link above here's the summary.
A graphic designer from the Netherlands Christian Boer created a font for those whose with willfull brains flips, mirrors or even rearranges letters and words on a page when they are just sensibly trying to increase their brains capacity with knowledge or figure out who Jen Aniston is dating this week.
What this font essentially does is thicken some of the letters, create a baseline for the eye, slants some of the letters and makes distinctions between those letters that can be easily exchanged.
I'm not sure about your reaction but I was surprised at how easily I was able to read that piece of text at the end.
Of course I now want this font.
But not starting at €165,01.
As usual the best things in education are not free. Or cheap. Or even alas moderately affordable. I really don't want to pay $218.00AU for a font. If you really want to have a look and are considering the price ( or think that perhaps I was incorrect with my translation of the page - please email me ASAP if I am ! ) then here is there website - Lexima
So of course I am now thinking of different fonts that may work in the same way. Surely there have been others who have worked on this. And I am positive there will be someone reading this post who is nodding their head right now and about to comment.
Dyslixc.com have a great list of fonts and rules for typeface.
I downloaded Lexia Readable from here which is free for non profit & educational use and reasonable for other use. I'll see how this one goes as an alternative to Comic Sans MS.
Website fonts
With regards to webfonts I am pleased to see my love for Trebuchet MS - the default font for this and all my other blogs and websites - is a good choice.
Apparently Geneva or Arial are solid choices as well. Personally I've never been sold on Arial. Or Times New Roman but that might just be my slightly rebellious side coming out. ;o)
Print Material
Yes, yes I hear you Graphic Designers of the world. You want to see Comic Sans MS tied to the nearest anchor, taken out to sea and dropped in without a word. Right?
Well too bad because there is research, new research yes I grant you but research all the same, that suggests these "harder to read" fonts - ironic really when you think about it - actually boost retention rates in comparison to reading from "easier fonts" such as Arial....article from BBC.co.uk here or here is the research paper from Princeton.
Now here is my personal opinion when it comes to creating print material and games. I started out my creative resource making journey many years ago totally sold out on Comic Sans MS until I got a little bored with it and was "encouraged strongly" to use Foundation font because "that is what the students are using in their own writing and modelling it will be useful".
So I did switch to NSW Foundation Print font but because it's not a strong, heavy typeface (remember I am just a teacher not a graphic designer here. Please don't make me learn another profession's jargon I have enough difficulty with our own! ) the resources never printed out as well and I started to notice that when used with reading fluency pages the students were generally not making the quick progress between levels as they may have previously.
I've switched back to Comic Sans MS now for a while and I'm fine with it.
Although let's see how this Lexia Readable goes. It looks good.
I'll let you know how I go and either leave a comment or email me and tell me what you think.
