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Kermit: A typeface for kids

microsoft.design

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Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#151

Post by smittywerben »

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 unpublished study is finding that adding prosody to text improves children’s comprehension.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

When Windows forces me to sign in to install it, I can't help but feel it's subsidizing this entire design silo. In the next episode, now lets make everyone (including dyslexic people) jump through even more hoops to install Windows to subsidize the creation of a font that even if it did help dyslexic people that I would not be able to use since it was at the expense of everyone else. YMMV.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#152

Post by dmboyd »

losvedir wrote: post #102

As someone teaching their 4 year old to read right now, I don't buy it. The text is long on "friendly" and random stuff like that, but that's not what I'm looking for in a font for kids. Just off the top of my head the "v" in there doesn't have a point on the bottom, which is one of the confusions my daughter has ("u" vs "v"). And I don't think the "n" needs the serif on the right foot, as that's not the "platonic" s…

Totally get where you're coming from — I had a similar experience when going through Teach Your Child to Read with my eldest. The book’s emphasis on phoneme recognition over rote memorization really worked for us too. That said, we hit a bit of a wall in that transitional stage in terms of reading content — our kid was still relying on those visual cues (like ligatures and vowel variants), and jumping straight to standard text was a stretch.

To bridge that, I actually built a font that keeps those phonics-aligned features and allowed us to use stories from things like Project Gutenberg. It’s based on the open-source TeX Gyre Schola, ( kind of like what is used in the Spot books) with OpenType features that auto-connect common digraphs (like “th”, “sh”, “ch”)— but in a way that can gradually phase out. Just put it up on GitHub if you're curious: Reading Guide Font. Open for any feedback or criticism!

https://github.com/dmboyd/Reading-Guide

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#153

Post by chrismorgan »

taco_emoji wrote: post #96
cjs_ac wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, becaus…

School administrators sometimes implement the stupidest policies based on correlations of various strengths. But even a strong correlation might have nothing to do with causation. E.g.: A school my wife used to work at is requiring all 8th graders to take algebra (normally a high-school-level class in the US) regardless of math aptitude because some study shows that 8th graders who take algebra have improved outcomes…

Depending on what “algebra” as an entire class actually is (I don’t know of it in that form from my Australian upbringing or from elsewhere) I can see it possibly having real benefit: abstract reasoning is one of the major things that needs to be taught to kids and has huge benefits but too often isn’t particularly taught; and algebra with all its symbolic representations and logical reasoning is excellent for that.

From your single-paragraph anecdote I don’t know the full story, of course, but it’s plausible to me that it might be not solely a case of confusing correlation and causation, but at least partly because the described effect made sense to people making the decisions, based on their broad experience in education.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#156

Post by legostormtroopr »

sambeau wrote: post #86
seba_dos1 wrote: post #67

It's super hard to read when you hijack scrolling (and do a poor job of it), regardless of the font used.

Here's one that doesn't. (yes it dives me mad, too) https://kermit-font.com

Wow - for something that is supposed to be friendly, that site suuucks.

A random animation of single letters, and 4 non-representative icons in the four corners.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#157

Post by PedroBatista »

This is a font by adults to adults: the ones in charge of the KPIs.

The font is cool, I have no gripes with it. The things I can't stand is the absolute corporate BS coated with a heavy layer of weak "science" and "empowering kids".

If the work is good, just let it do the talking. No need for waterboarding us with waves of corporate slop.

Again, the font is fine. Congratulations to the people who worked on it.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#158

Post by 0xWTF »

losvedir wrote: post #102

As someone teaching their 4 year old to read right now, I don't buy it. The text is long on "friendly" and random stuff like that, but that's not what I'm looking for in a font for kids. Just off the top of my head the "v" in there doesn't have a point on the bottom, which is one of the confusions my daughter has ("u" vs "v"). And I don't think the "n" needs the serif on the right foot, as that's not the "platonic" s…

My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. I showed her the Kermit page and she said "Whoever's doing this ... this is total bologna."

Also, to your struggles ... she's a fan of Handwriting Without Tears.

Re: Kermit: A typeface for kids

#159

Post by nine_k »

It's a good-looking informal font, with a very flexible model, and an interesting way to animate it. Wonderful! I'm happy to see what have they achieved technically and aesthetically.

Any claims of pedagogical helpfulness should be made very cautiously though, before there are multiple independent studies of that.

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