Symposium
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0051

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ABSTRACT

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VIDEO

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AUTHORS

SignWriting in Research

“Signtype: Designing a
SignWriting Font -
Ideas and Challenges”

by
Janina Lentföhr
Joachim Nitschke
Paul Rutrecht

“Signtype:
Designing a SignWriting Font --
Ideas and Challenges”

by
Janina Lentföhr
Joachim Nitschke
Paul Rutrecht

Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Department of Design, Hamburg, Germany
https://www.design.haw-hamburg.de

Delegs SignWriting Editor
https://www.delegs.de
Contact Person: Stefan Wöhrmann

Type design, the design of digital fonts, is one of the classic disciplines in graphic design. Latin fonts have a long history and there are well established rules and guidelines concerning their creation. Different fonts not only differ in readability but also in aesthetical and stylistic aspects.

In the Delegs team SignWriting is a highly valued tool for teaching. Viewed from the perspective of type design it is rather new and has — so far — only one official font. Can the principles of type design in latin script be applied to SignWriting as well? Which aspects of a SignWriting glyph can be changed for stylistic reasons, which are essential for its readability? During our study project we approached these questions by designing a new SignWriting font. Having informative discussions with Stefan Wöhrmann and the Delegs team we were looking for a compromise between simplicity, aesthetics, iconicity and the principle rules that the SignWriting script is based on.

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