Atkinson Hyperlegible

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Atkinson Hyperlegible
Atkinson Hyperlegible characters.svg
Category Sans-serif
Classification Grotesque
Designer(s) Applied Design Works
Foundry Braille Institute
Date created2019
Website brailleinstitute.org/freefont

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a freely available typeface built around a grotesque sans-serif core, intended to be optimally legible for readers who are partially visually impaired, with all characters maximally distinguishable from one another. It was developed by the Braille Institute of America in collaboration with Applied Design Works and is available under the SIL Open Font License. It won Fast Company 's Innovation by Design Award for Graphic Design in 2019 and was shortlisted for a graphic design award by Dezeen in 2020.

Contents

History

The font's normal appearance above, and a blur effect simulating how the same letters might appear to someone with a low-vision condition below. Atkinson Hyperlegible blur.webp
The font's normal appearance above, and a blur effect simulating how the same letters might appear to someone with a low-vision condition below.

The project began as part of a visual rebranding at the Braille Institute, [1] which contracted the studio Applied Design Works to work with a specialist in low-vision conditions from the Braille Institute and a panel of people with such conditions. [2] Most students that the Braille Institute works with are not fully blind and do not use the tactile writing system with which the institute shares a name. [3] Applied Design Works looked for a typeface that would suit the Braille Institute's needs but were unable to find one. [3] Experimenting with both serif and sans-serif fonts including Times New Roman and Frutiger, they found that distinguishing among homoglyphs, and even among some characters that do not appear very similar to fully sighted people, was difficult for partially visually impaired people because of these fonts' focus on uniformity. Thus the project shifted to creating a typeface that would be as legible as possible for the community the Braille Institute serves. [1]

Applied Design Works' creative director, Craig Dobie, put Elliott Scott in charge of designing the typeface. [1] Building around a grotesque sans-serif core, [4] the Applied Designs Works team worked to make sure that none of the typeface's glyphs could be mistaken for any other, consulting with clients of the Braille Institute and familiarizing themselves with research into legibility. [3] The Braille Institute named the finished product after the institute's founder, J. Robert Atkinson, [5] and released it on its website through a custom license; [6] in 2021, they made it available through Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License. [7] [8]

In 2019, Atkinson Hyperlegible won Fast Company 's Innovation by Design Award for Graphic Design. [1] The next year, it was shortlisted for a graphic design award by Dezeen , [9] losing to a series of heat-reactive stamps that illustrate climate change. [10]

Design

Atkinson Hyperlegible uses many circles, in a nod to braille. Atkinson Hyperlegible circles.png
Atkinson Hyperlegible uses many circles, in a nod to braille.

Atkinson Hyperlegible contains four styles, each of 335 glyphs: regular, bold, italics, and italics bold. It supports diacritics in 27 languages. [4]

Elliott Scott of Applied Design Works and studio creative director Craig Dobie made the decision "to break a lot of rules that a lot of designers will care about", [1] for instance adding serifs to the uppercase i but not the uppercase tee [2] and giving the uppercase ef a significantly longer tie (middle bar) than the uppercase e. [1] Mark Wilson of Fast Company writes: [1]

Stare too long at its quirks, and Atkinson Hyperlegible almost feels like it has an identity crisis, as if a dozen fonts were smashed together to make one. But typed out on a page, it's been treated with careful kerning that the average eye just kind of accepts, as if it was any other typeface.

Other efforts to make letters distinct include exaggerating letters' shapes and angling their spurs. There are many circles in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a nod to braille dots and the Braille Institute. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typography</span> Art of arranging type

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spacing, and spaces between pairs of letters. The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Type design</span> Art of designing typefaces and fonts

Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.

In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic", and serif typefaces as "roman".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typeface</span> Set of characters that share common design features

A typeface is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helvetica</span> Neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface

Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frutiger (typeface)</span> Typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger

Frutiger is a series of typefaces named after its Swiss designer, Adrian Frutiger. Frutiger is a humanist sans-serif typeface, intended to be clear and highly legible at a distance or at small text sizes. A popular design worldwide, type designer Steve Matteson described its structure as "the best choice for legibility in pretty much any situation" at small text sizes, while Erik Spiekermann named it as "the best general typeface ever".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rockwell (typeface)</span> Slab-serif font

Rockwell is a slab serif typeface designed by the Monotype Corporation and released in 1934. The project was supervised by Monotype's engineering manager Frank Hinman Pierpont. This typeface is distinguished by a serif at the apex of the uppercase A, while the lowercase a has two storeys. Because of its monoweighted stroke, Rockwell is used primarily for display or at small sizes rather than as a body text. Rockwell is based on an earlier, more condensed slab serif design cast by the Inland Type Foundry called Litho Antique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitstream Vera</span> Typeface series from Bitstream

Vera is a digital typeface superfamily with a liberal license. It was designed by Jim Lyles from the now-defunct Bitstream Inc. type foundry, and it is closely based on Bitstream Prima, for which Lyles was also responsible. It is a TrueType font with full hinting instructions, which improve its rendering quality on low-resolution devices such as computer monitors. The font has also been repackaged as a Type 1 PostScript font, called Bera, for LaTeX users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Frutiger</span> Swiss typeface designer (1928–2015)

Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten bei Bern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trebuchet MS</span> Digital sans-serif typeface family

Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Windows XP default theme, succeeding MS Sans Serif and Tahoma. Released free of charge by Microsoft as part of their core fonts for the Web package, it remained one of the most popular body text fonts on webpages as of 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roboto</span> Sans-serif typeface family by Google

Roboto is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font</span> Particular size, weight and style of a typeface

In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece for each glyph. A typeface consists of various fonts that share an overall design.

Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour or architecture, for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the permeability of a communication channel. A large number of known factors can affect legibility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Braille Institute of America</span> Nonprofit organization

The Braille Institute of America (BIA) is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Los Angeles providing programs, seminars and one-on-one instruction for the visually impaired community in Southern California. Funded almost entirely by private donations, all of the institute's services are provided completely free of charge. The organization has seven regional centers: Anaheim, Coachella Valley, Laguna Hills, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and Santa Barbara, as well as outreach programs at more than 200 locations throughout Southern California. It is a member of the Braille Authority of North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cantarell (typeface)</span>

Cantarell is the default typeface supplied with the user interface of GNOME since version 3.0, replacing Bitstream Vera and DejaVu. The font was originated by Dave Crossland in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface

Open Sans is an open source humanist sans-serif typeface that was designed by Steve Matteson under commission from Google. It was released in 2011 and is based on his earlier design called Droid Sans, which was specifically created for Android mobile devices but with slight modifications to its width.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Robert Atkinson</span>

J. Robert Atkinson was the founder of the Universal Braille Press in 1919 in Los Angeles, later known as the Braille Institute of America, and published the first Braille edition of the King James Version of the Bible, among other books. Atkinson became an innovator and advocate for the blind, working to enable the sight-impaired to lead normal lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IBM Plex</span> Open source typeface family

IBM Plex is an open source typeface superfamily conceptually designed and developed by Mike Abbink at IBM in collaboration with Bold Monday to reflect the design principles of IBM and to be used for all brand material across the company internationally. Plex replaces Helvetica as the IBM corporate typeface after more than fifty years, freeing the company from extensive license payments in the process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Montserrat (typeface)</span> Geometric sans-serif font

Montserrat is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Argentine graphic designer Julieta Ulanovsky and released in 2011. It was inspired by posters, signs and painted windows from the first half of the twentieth century, seen in the historic Montserrat neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wilson, Mark (19 September 2019). "This typeface hides a secret in plain sight. And that's the point". Innovation by Design. Fast Company . New York City. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 Crook, Lizzie (11 September 2020). "Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface is designed for visually impaired readers". Dezeen . London. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 Mangan, Tom (9 June 2022) [8 November 2019]. "New Typeface Boosts Legibility for Low Vision Readers". All About Vision. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  4. 1 2 Budrick, Callie (14 October 2020). "The Hyperlegible Typeface Changing How We See Print". Design Inspiration. Print . Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  5. ↑ Marsden, Rhodri (23 August 2021). "What's in a font? How typography can help us read better". The National . Abu Dhabi, UAE. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  6. ↑ "Download the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font". Braille Institute of America . Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  7. ↑ "Braille Institute's Atkinson Hyperlegible Typeface Now Available on Google Fonts" (Press release). Braille Institute of America. 5 August 2021. Retrieved 18 January 2023.
  8. ↑ "Atkinson Hyperlegible". Google Fonts . Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  9. ↑ "Shortlists". Dezeen Awards 2020. Dezeen . London. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  10. ↑ "Climate Change Stamps | Winner". Dezeen Awards 2020. Dezeen . London. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
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