Ever walked into a new place, town, city, train station, airport, university or hospital and have no idea of where to go next, where to find the toilets? Trust me, that was the experience I had the first time I went to apply for enrollment at Midlands State University (Zimbabwe). From the entrance gate I had a difficult time navigating my way to the administration block, yes, administration block; and the very same visual aides (signage) that are supposed to help with the navigation gave me more trouble. And it wasn’t only myself with navigation problems, I met a few more other equally confused potential students who were stuck in a similar situation. 3 years after, this motivated me to design a font for Accessibility, a font that is designed for maximum legibility & readability, for people of different ages, disabilities & abilities.
Problem:
Different people have various problematic issues when identifying letters. This encompasses general people, children, aging individuals, dyslexic people & the visually impaired. From various studies, it has been shown that the most problematic letters are as follows:
- Lowercase l (el) can be read as the number 1 or a capital I (i)
- Capital I (i) can be read as a lowercase l (el) or as number 1
- The number 1 can be read as a lowercase l (el), capital I (i) or number 7
- Lowercase “i” could be read as lowercase j
- Capital B could be read as 8
- Capital D could be read as number 0 or lowercase o
- Double v (vv) could be read as “w”
- Uppercase S could be read as 5
- Uppercase Z could be read as 2
- Uppercase Q could be read as O
- Uppercase C could be read as G
- Lowercase rn could be read as m
- LJ could be read as U
- Lowercase c could be read as lowercase o
- Lowercase e could be read as lowercase o
- Lowercase infant “a” could be read as lowercase 0
Solution:
To design characters that can be decoded easily & quickly with maximum character recognition, it is suggested to do the following:
- Add a serif on top and/or base of uppercase I (i)
- Bent terminal on bottom of lowercase l (el) to differentiate it from 1 & other confusing characters
- Distinctive arm on top of 1 for distinction & clarity
- The negative space between the stem and dot must be wide to allow for good distinction from characters like “l” & 1
Differentiating often confused characters helps to increase the legibility & readability of a font thus making it easy for people to read through & identify as they read either quickly or slowly in bigger or smaller sizes. Famba typeface aims to do just that, it’s not designed to look pretty but to solve a particular problem. It will work well as a font for small text in books, apps etc or bigger sizes such as signage & posters. In part 2 we’ll be looking at how Famba typeface is a great typeface for way-finding purposes.
