CC Brief plan & process

Objective:

To develop a typeface which assists ChADHD (children with ADHD) to focus on passages of text.

A successful typeface may also assist other neurodivergent students/those challenged by dyslexia and other learning issues.

How it fits with the brief:

The projected outcome tackles a micro issue, but one that is often overlooked. Whilst our understanding of ADHD and how it impacts a child’s learning journey is expanding exponentially, designers have a responsibility to take this knowledge and utilise it to produce functional solutions.

Students are often only diagnosed with ADHD during their schooling years, at which point they must come to terms with their label and the challenges it presents. Depending on the age and emotional maturity of the individual, this can be an immense hurdle. As designers, we can help by promoting awareness and developing tools - no matter how micro - which might help get ChADHD through their many years of education.

So how can a typeface do this? My working theory is that variance is key to triggering focus and a dose of dopamine. Ideally written educational material would be typeset in mixed typefaces or multiple fonts. In practice this takes time, resources, and most essentially: acknowledgement of the issue by the practitioner.

Could a typeface be developed which offers subtle variation intrinsic to its design? Can an informed manipulation of individual letters - via weights, shape, kerning - achieve this?

This is the experiment on which I embark.

Finally: The very act of working on a novel project often promulgates it into discussion. Awareness grows, empathy emerges. Maybe one educator learns that it’s not the material a student doesn’t understand, but the manner in which it is presented. Maybe one publisher starts considering that traditional rules of typesetting don’t always apply. Discussion. Awareness. Empathy. Solutions.

How will it be done?

In GDE730 I developed a research proposal, which I hope to pursue in further education, looking at how chADHD react to typography/layout. The research in this realm is limited, but this is my attempt at putting some of what I found into action. Some of the research i unearthed I did not delve into for 730; this brief offers the opportunity. Some of this material is not specific to ADHD: but offers insight into how children respond to font styles and will help inform my design desicions.

I need to analyse data of letter frequency, particularly bigrams and trigrams at the beginning of words. I also plan to evaluate what considerations went into the design of typefaces for dyslexia and the visually impaired: do similar principles apply?

And then there is the making: typography design is a new field for me, so despite ambitions I am setting realistic expectations for what can be achieved in an 8 week timeframe. I will begin with Adobe Illustrator, and venture into Glyphs3. The module outcome may be more conditional than complete, but it gives me a chance to test and experiment.

Steps:

In so far that the process can be made linear…

1) Identify & assess frequency data

2) Define typefaces of interest

3) Review of academic literature

4) Experimentation & Design

5) Assess. Reassess.

Background note:

Witnessing first hand the impact ADHD has on my own child’s learning was the trigger for my interest in this realm. Despite a high reading level and love of books, my son often cannot concentrate on large passages of text when it is formatted without variance. At times the aversion is instant: just looking at a page uniformally typeset will evoke an immediate disregard. He describes this: “it’s too much” which I have discovered means “it’s really not enough variance”. It may seem counter-intuitive, but More is more manageable.