Phonotype
Project Overview
Category
Disciplines
University
Year
About
Phonotype is a typographic system designed to help people learn the correct pronunciation of foreign languages. The designer believes that communication is an essential part of integration, and has responded to the fact that one in ten adults currently living in Belgium has difficulties with the Dutch and Flemish languages. Both tongues are characterised by a variety of dual sounds, mainly in the vowels, that make them difficult to master. Phonotype overcomes this problem by building cues about pronunciation into the visual structure of the typeface, stretching letters or combining them to indicate a dual sound.
Team
Walda Verbaenen
PXL – MAD School of Arts Hasselt
Walda Verbaenen is a PhD researcher at READSEARCH, under the guidance of prof dr. Ann Bessemans. The aim of this research department is to develop practical/typographic legibility and readability studies within a new conceptual framework concerning typographic design research. One of the main goals in Walda’s work is the social responsibility which a designer can offer. Hereby she uses the supporting function and power that design and typography (letters) can bring as a useful and meaningful tool. (Visual) language and the use of letters can build a bridge to bring people closer to each other.
Gallery
