Project Precedents

At the beginning of the quarter, our capstone professor Kyrsten assigned us a reading called the “Adjacent Possible” from Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From. In the reading, Johnson explains a concept called the “multiple,” where one designer can discover an idea that three other designers independently discover around the same time. I did research before I began this capstone topic to see if anyone else had trekked into this design territory, but turned up nothing. Somehow, in the past two weeks, I’ve been able to find loads of similar projects. I’m beginning to get that “multiple” idea.

Here are a few that I’ve found:

Braille Devanagari by Viraj Deo. An interesting exercise in how letterforms relate to the braille system and proportion, but I’m not sure if the execution is tailored that well to a visually impaired person. Not quite as relevant to my project as it uses a different alphabet altogether, but it is an aesthetically beautiful system.

The project evolved from various visual expirations and meaning of the geometric shape ‘circle’ into an attempt to re-look at existing the ‘Braille Devanagari system’, adhering to the aesthetics and structure of Devanagari script (Bharati braille). The challenge was make it more coherent to read for a visually impaired person who understands the braille Devanagari system. The result was a Devanagari typeface based on the principles of the Bharati braille system.

Braille Hybrid by Sam Charman. Again, interesting relationship between braille and roman type, but not sure it’s the most meaningful. I can’t find the system flushed out, and the way the type is drawn + color considerations + type size considerations leave a lot to be improved upon.

Small experimental typographic project I’m looking to push on soon into a resurrection of the ‘Favourite Faces’ type project I started whilst at University. The FF concept is based around celebrating and exploring typography as an art form as well as its functional purposes, this spread into a range of zines and products looking to further the awareness of good typography. The basis of this is an exploration into binary typography in the form of Braille i.e. the creation of type on a grid that is either on or off in its use of dots, within this I am looking to create a hybrid of roman and braille characters. I will be publishing this as a small zine and run of prints later on in the year allowing me to get my hands dirty again in the print side of things.

Braille Font by Lindsey Muir. Seems like design for design’s sake; I’m not sure what her intentions were but I don’t think this was designed for the visually impaired. There is no relationship between the forms or colors and I can’t imagine it would be easy to read for someone who is visually impaired.

Created in conjunction with my thesis, this typeface overlays the braille alphabet with traditional roman letterforms.

Visual Braille Font by Michael Russ, Theo Seemann and Christopher Heller. By far the most successful exploration as I see it. Love the relationship between the two forms, but again, I don’t think this is actually designed for a visually impaired individual’s use. A wonderful exploration of form, but still room for clarification. Also, this typeface seems very aggressive to me, and I’d love to design one that isn’t so harsh, both visually and in personality.

With visual braille we made a font which is based on the braille letters for blind people. Our font combines a visual, as well as a haptic experience. The intention was to design an interface between the braille font and a standard roman font. Advantages could be easier learning of the braille font and maybe a change of the public awareness towards visually handicapped people.