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Kermit: A typeface for kids

microsoft.design

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Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#51

Post by shuggy999 »

dmje wrote: post #29

It's a nice looking font but kind of hilarious that the official website [0] is entirely baffling! What do those icons mean? What is the license? And mainly: how the f can I GET the damn thing??? Talk about being a bit over-clever with your design... [0] https://kermit-font.com/

In the fonts used on the website; https://kermit-font.com/_css/KermitRoman-VF.otf, https://kermit-font.com/_css/KermitItalic-VF.otf, the license is:

Beta version of a custom font for Microsoft by Underware. Only for internal testing, not meant for any other kind of usage. Email info@underware.nl for more information

Seems to be a rushed release that they had a deadline to get to put a press release for.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#52

Post by FjordWarden »

> unpublished study is finding that adding prosody to text improves children’s comprehension.

As a dyslexic software engineer who knows by heart a good number of the 50 tables in the open font type specification, I'd like to look into this in more detail but there is no code or paper published about this (yet).

In the mean time, it would be nice for people stop using dyslexics as an excuse to motivate for their own special interests. I've suffered my entire formative years under this low-key Munchausen by proxy from all sort of educators gass-lighting me into believing I should use some technology that in the fullness of time proved to be counter productive.

But ok, the variable speed HOI animation looks cool, I'll give you that.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#53

Post by browningstreet »

flusteredBias wrote: post #18

This is anecdotal and I hope someone who has some research experience can say whether this is true or not generally, but I recently got a Kindle and found that if I use really large font sizes where there are fewer than 50 words on a page it's easier for me to stay engaged. Maybe this has something to do with cognitive load or chunking information. Some fonts look quite a bit better at these large sizes. So for me I…

When I've done that I feel like I'm reading a text message, not a book (fiction or non-fiction). Possibly not a universal experience.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#55

Post by cjs_ac »

FjordWarden wrote: post #52

> unpublished study is finding that adding prosody to text improves children’s comprehension. As a dyslexic software engineer who knows by heart a good number of the 50 tables in the open font type specification, I'd like to look into this in more detail but there is no code or paper published about this (yet). In the mean time, it would be nice for people stop using dyslexics as an excuse to motivate for their own s…

As a former teacher who's done original research in educational psychology, I'd like to add that educational psychology is just a grab-bag of weak correlations whose discovery was motivated by, 'When I was a teacher, I saw ______ and that made me sad.' Any 'theory' is a just-so story that the researcher assembled from ideas they found aesthetically pleasing. It's not science; it's activity without achievement, because the individual pieces of research can't be assembled into a coherent body of knowledge.

The typeface looks nice though.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#56

Post by parsimo2010 »

I don't know about kids or reading disabilities, but it looks nice and does feel "friendly" to read. Having the ability to vary and animate a lot of parameters will certainly enable some neat web designs.

Edit: I'm poking at this and it seems like the only way to do the animation is via the font designer's library. I'll be a lot more excited when this is supported by more options.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#57

Post by zamadatix »

Pxtl wrote: post #46
abanana wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> letters too close-together The CSS has { letter-spacing: -.04rem; } It's across the entire site - no exclusion for this page (or for their .kermit-font class). So it appears they've missed the fact that they're altering the look-and-feel of the very font they're presenting in this post.

I assume that's to work around the high width of the font. Information density seems too low for paragraphs of text with that width. I could see this current version (without the spacing hack) being the "easy-reader" version, and then make a "YA reader" variant that's lower weight and horizontallu narrower.

This letter spacing was the case for the site prior to the Kermit font post.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#58

Post by silveira »

Freak_NL wrote: post #19

Trying to find out how this font is licenced is painfully impossible on both the linked Microsoft website and the atrocious https://kermit-font.com/ homepage. Regardless of the claimed merits of this font (I'm not dyslectic and this font just strains my eyes), I hold the opinion that any effort like this by a megacorp like Microsoft should be approached by them from a charitable angle. If this font isn't permissively…

+1 The first thing I did was search for the license. The license is what can make it or break it in this kind of project. The absence of clear and permissive licensing is a red flag for me.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#59

Post by [deleted] »

dmje wrote: post #29

It's a nice looking font but kind of hilarious that the official website [0] is entirely baffling! What do those icons mean? What is the license? And mainly: how the f can I GET the damn thing??? Talk about being a bit over-clever with your design... [0] https://kermit-font.com/

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