This topic is directly connected to the work done by Dr. Sue Walker at The University of Reading. Kidstype.org

I'm not sure if there really is an age issue when it comes to type preferences. People assume something 'fun' would appeal to kids, but if it's hard to read, no one will like it, regardless of the age. And 'fun' fonts can appeal to anyone of any age.

Growing brains need a healthy variety of typefaces.
Not all on the same page, though.

Growing brains need a healthy variety of typefaces.
Not all on the same page, though.

Same goes for us adults ;)

What about display typefaces? In my opinion the reader must have something visual they can relate to and engage with. If we are thinking about display type, shouldn't something be used which will appeal to a reader and target group?

>shouldn’t something be used which will appeal to a reader and target group?

Children are not a target group.

why not? im designing a book aimed at children. Therfore they are my target group/ audience.

Marc, children as a target group is like saying adults as a target group. Children come from different ethnic groups different cultures and different social values. Don't paint with such a large brush. You may have to define who your children are.

Perhaps you should look at the best selling children's books in the genre you're working on. My guess is that you'll find a diverse set of type choices and some hand lettering too - I don't think you'll find too much stereotypical "kid-type" in the best books - in my experience children like to be taken seriously.

Si

Everything is a target group. That's what Design is about.

hhp

You're confusing marketing with design.
Design can be tailored to specific product users, but that's not the same as targeting them.

Miss Tiffany -

Thanks for the Kidstype link. Great resource.

-J.

Jeff Fisher :: Engineer of Creative Identity
Jeff Fisher LogoMotives

Author: Savvy Designer's Guide to Success from HOW Design Books

> You’re confusing marketing with design.

No, we're just using the terms in different ways.
My point was that Design is about the user, not us.

BTW, one thing virtually all children under about 10 share is the strong preference for reading deliberatively, not immersively (see Watts & Nisbett). One thing this means for example is that serifs are not functional to them (although any formal feature can still be evocative).

hhp

There will be a forum on typography for children, chaired by Sue Walker, at this year's ATypI conference in Helsinki.

in my experience children like to be taken seriously

As the oldest of eight and a grandfather of ten, I can attest to the truth of this observation. Kids hate to be "treated like kids." Any decent typeface with a large x-height and rounded (vs. angular) letterforms will work for text and captions, but have fun with the headlines.

My point is a Dominican kid raised in Queens speaking spanish doen't have the same response to type as the WASP raised in New Cannan, CT speaking english. I'm not even getting to an African child from…

Narrow you demographics. Who are you trying to reach.

There is another way to spec type, which is to take your cue from the content.

is there a standard print being taught to kids these days? two birds, one stone.

'Children's books' always do have two target groups (if you assume that you have to design for 'target groups'): the children themselves and the adults who buy them for them, read them out for them - literary scientists call that 'double adressing'. Plus you have to think that there are special interest media and institutions on children's literature that do recommendations (also painting with a large brush: they mainly use categories like age) etc.
So I think the goal is to achieve high typographical quality for all possible readers.

Stephan, true. In the edutainment field, one designs the front of the box for the kids ("Look ma!") and the back for the parents ("Hmmm, let me see what's actually in this thing.")

hhp

There is a publication of Gerrit Noordzij about "children and type" in german: "Kind und Schrift", based on a lecture at the "tgm München" (Typographical Society Munich) in 1983. You can get it in german (as PDF) here

And there is also the work of Hans Eduard Meier, who recently worked on script for children.
There is an interesting essay from him in "STM Swiss Typographic Magazine" 2/2004 pp 6-31.

Some interesting comments here, but nobody has yet answered Marc's question. He's looking for fonts, right? Here's a start:

FF Providence Sans and Roman
Critter
ITC Clover
ITC Kumquat
Orlando
P22 Way Out West
Cutout

More Rounded:
Ketchupa
Mustardo
Bryant
Octopuss
Bello

What's the book about, Marc?

>What’s the book about, Marc?

Apparently it doesn't matter, if it's for children.

Rosemary Sassoon in Britain has developed a wide array of text faces that are used for children's book publishing (including some new textbooks in the UK).

Sassoon Sans Family
Sassoon Book Family
Sassoon Primary Family
Sassoon Infant Family
Sassoon Sans Slope Family
__
www.typeoff.de

I didn't develop Fontesquefor children, but it's often used for children's material.

It's also popular for food packaging and chicklit book covers.

Stephen...what makes those 'kids fonts' moreso than 'adult' fonts?

I think the comment on 'look at the content' is the better indicator of the type choices to make.

You don't think those are all fun and playful, al? Yeah, still waiting on content.

Sassoon as characters looks great. It's the typeface used by Postman Pat! But it kerned horribly for me (was using quark, if that matters.)

For "educational" type: check out this to-the-point list:
http://www.educationalfontware.com/EFI_home_page.html
Some of these (HB, Palmer) contain versions that even have the ruled guides.

Before making a final choice, you should check children's book characters such as Pooh, Dora, Elmo, Barney, etc etc to see what type they use, because what they use, they use often, and it becomes an association with that character. (I think Elmo used Providence at one point, but I couldn't find an example. Thing is, they usually switch "official" typefaces every few years anyways.)

Brian, did you kern with versions of Sassoon that you got from Linotype? I think that there were earlier versions distributed through other channels. I'd like to know.
__
www.typeoff.de

tiffany,
any other links that may have info associated with learning letterforms (pre-literacy)?

meaning, pre-literate children, and learning to identify letterforms, and if there are suggested typeface that team this?

it looks like ther eis really little or no research to support the use of one font over another to teach reading or for that matter letter identification

meaning, pre-literate children, and learning to identify letterforms, and if there are suggested typeface that team this?

The simpler the letterform, the better, because the simple letterforms convey the "essence" of each letterform more clearly.

What are the essences of the letterforms?

hhp

simpler....ok.
what is this supposed to mean? there are many "simple" fonts. every school district in the universe has different "simple fonts" and standards for teaching this stuff. I am trying to see if there are some objective facts out there regarding teaching pre-literate kids (3-5 yr olds) the good ol' A-B-Cs. Sasson seems to get a lot of talk (it meets a lot of criteria for teaching children), and it is a lovely font. However, after reading a few articles out on the web some folks propose MS comic sans as a the best solution for teaching these kids as it is soft and freindly and replicates to degree handwriting. (I hate comic sans, gag). in the end i am looking for some facts. the kidstype.org site is great i would really like to see more of their study (they talk about comic sans too)

Are you teaching them to read, or to write?

hhp

letter identification first (this is looking into the first exposure of kids to type), then on to reading and writing. we are talking about the basis of reading. kids will eventually get vast amounts of exposure to type of all sorts. but as a foundational experience with type I am trying to find research that supports a certain font.

You don’t think those are all fun and playful

Well, sure. But 'fun and playful' != kids. It's an attribute kids can have, or one adults can have.

What I cringe at is the 'oh, it's for kids? Use something FUN like comic sans!' type of reaction that is all too common.

What are the essences of the letterforms?

Futura Light is about as "essential" as a typeface gets.

This is a realy interesting thread. I'm probably ot going to be answering Marc's question either (sorry Mark).
I have been using sassoon for kids multimedia. I wanted to know about peoples thoughts on the essentials too:

x-height, point size, relative weight etc.

Also, more about actually setting the type, kerning, leading etc.

I guess the key really is maximum ledgibility. We have been using voice over for everything and supporting that with text on screen.

We have three point sizes for three age ranges:
prep/foundation: 30pt sasoon sans
grade 1-2: 26pt sasoon sans
grade 3-4: 22pt sasoon sans
grade 4-5: 18pt sasoon sans

These also had various kerning and leading setting.

We tried out some stuff and instinctively went for quite a bit of leading, up to 6pts for the younger kids.

There was a fair amount of discussion about ambiguity of letters in various fonts: a preference for a straight tail on the nine(sorry about the terminoloy...), as opposed to the upside down 6 was a good example of this. We looked at heaps of fun fonts, but for the younger kids, didn't have enough differntiation between characters like 9.
A capital I with ligatures was also necessary.

mrfussy, yes, totally agree with your comment, "letter identification first" I guess even if you're not setting out to teach reading or writing, then it will still probably go a long way if what you're doing can do that as well.

I think also that what is said on "kidstype.com" is a really important, in terms of what we were doing:
# Teacher opinion, generally, favours sans serif typefaces because of the simplicity of the letter shapes
# But children encounter a wide range of letterforms in their day-to-day environment
# Publishers tend to listen to teachers because they influence the book-buying policy in schools
# Children are seldom asked what they think about the typefaces in the books they read

I may have answered my own question here, but wanted other peoples feedback.

Sassoon: a problem I see is its slant - pretty, but bad for onscreen setting.

> a preference for a straight tail on the nine(sorry about
> the terminoloy…), as opposed to the upside down 6

Yes, this sort of thing is critically important. But one has to overcome the general tendency for Modernist stylistic consistency to rise to that level.

> Children are seldom asked

Neither are adults! :-(
And when they are asked, it's all taken too
literally - the proper "filtering" is never done.

hhp

We are not actually using primary, which is slanted. We use Sassoon Sans and Sassoon Sans Bold, so slantiness wasn't an issue for us.

We also recut it with some of the alts that were provided.

The w seems to do weird things if you don't anti-alias it too.

The manual that comes with the font touches on some really good points about how to choose the font and some pointers for how to set it too.