IBEAM Fonts Dyslexics Edition

The invitation came after the group presented their innovative website www.dyslexier.org to the project partnership last year. Dyslexier.org aims to show dyslexics in a positive light, not as sufferers but as highly creative thinkers, and has been created by the boys as part of their ongoing school work with teacher Mike Keveth and creative practitioners Oliver West and Robert and Gill Hocking.

The core long-term partnership between the Looe students, their inspirational teacher Mike Keveth and practitioners Oliver West and Robert and Gill Hocking has been supported by a wider collaboration between Creative Partnerships Cornwall & Plymouth, Looe Community School, the University of Plymouth, University College Falmouth, Plymouth Arts Centre, and Gul.

All the students and practitioners who have created the new IBEAM typefaces - Kevin May, Sam Darlington, Tom Beaumont, Chris Howarth, Glen Merriott and Anthony Libby, along with Mike Keveth and Oliver West - have varying degrees of dyslexic tendencies, and the new typefaces aim to reveal and to investigate dyslexic peoples’ unique and often quite difficult relationships with text and words.

For student Anthony Libby, for example, text is generally experienced like “a big traffic accident” and so the highway code symbols in his ‘Carnage’ font imparts this to the non-dyslexic. In Sam Darlington’s ‘Second Letter’ font, each lower-case letter contains its capital version, and vice versa, thereby offering dyslexics visual clues to help them navigate the text jungle. ‘Tumble’ by Glen Merriot shows non-dyslexics how dyslexics sometimes see words jumping about on the page, making them extremely hard to make sense of and to read. Oliver West has plumped for a typeface that is his own handwriting – making it as easy for him personally to understand as possible. And so on - each font demonstrates different aspects of the dyslexic’s experience.

Eight giant posters – to be found at bus stops and other venues in East Cornwall and Plymouth, advertising the new ‘IBeam Fonts Dyslexics Edition’ and also using them in their designs – were launched at a special opening ceremony at a bus stop in Looe on June 6th.

The students shared the day with parents and friends as well as representatives from the project’s partner organisations. Attending the opening were Mike Keveth, Gill and Robert Hocking of Artytechs Interactive, Ian Hutchinson of Plymouth Arts Centre, Chris Speed of the Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (IDAT) at the University of Plymouth, Cassiel Dennis and team members from Creative Partnerships.

The launch also saw the first appearance of a special limited edition neoprene wallet, manufactured by Gul to a design invented by the student group, containing a mini CD-Rom of the new fonts. A special day’s work at University College Falmouth’s Tremough campus back in March has led to the collaborative design of the giant posters and of the wallet, designed to hold not only the mini CD-ROM but offering space for personal visual thinking notes used by dyslexic students in place of written school notes.

Ian Hutchinson of Plymouth Arts Centre says: “It’s been a journey of exploration for us, the bringing together of different areas, dyslexia and the design of fonts.” He adds: “It’s been hard work, but we and they have achieved so much. The posters are a great visual manifestation of the project in the wider context of the high street. They are fascinating adverts for the whole programme of work, making the typefaces far more than just things on a computer.”

Student Tom Beaumont says: “We’ve learned what you’ve got to do to create something really useful – all the steps leading to it, and how to work together as a team.”

Robert Hocking says, “Many non-dyslexic people struggle to understand dyslexia, and so some of the fonts interpret for those people some of the difficulties dyslexics experience with letters and words.”

Importantly, this programme of work is set to have lasting benefits for the students involved. Mrs Darlington, Sam’s mother, says, “This work has increased the boys’ confidence and self esteem enormously,” and Robert Hocking adds, “They really have used lots of technology; hopefully what they have learned will stay with them.”

Teacher Mike Keveth says: “Thanks to this programme, all the students in this group have passed a very difficult GNVQ equivalent to 4 GCSE passes; they are more motivated and quicker at tasks than the rest of the group. Without the work of Creative Partnerships this would not have happened.”

The innovative posters advertising these new IBEAM fonts have a two week stint from June 6th at public venues in East Cornwall and Plymouth, including Looe and Liskeard bus stops, and will be on longer-term display at Looe Community School at Plymouth Arts Centre and at iDAT, University of Plymouth.

For more information contact Cassiel Dennis at Creative Partnerships on 07968 992485 or Ian Hutchinson at Plymouth Arts Centre on 01752 206114. You can also download the fonts themselves free from both www.dyslexier.org and www.i-dat.org/projects/ibeam