Interesting question! I have no insight on the subject (sorry!), but I am certainly curious about what others have to say now. (Thanks for a great topic.)

I suggest spending some time in a children’s book store (or the children’s section of a book store). Sure, you’ll see some Comic Sans, but you may be surprised at the range of typefaces intended to appeal to children. It’s not so much the typeface as how it’s used. Things like color and composition are more important than the font.

in the search box, type “children.” You’ll be able to dig up some threads such as this: http://typophile.com/node/14825

Gerrit Noordzij (De Streek [The Stroke]) has researched and written about typefaces for children. His angle is more learning, legibility and dislexia, not aesthetics though.

Mark:

I completely understand. I guess what I’m asking if there has been anything that could be considered ’data obtained from research’ that would indicate whether or not children actually benefit and/or prefer bad hand scrawling. ;o)

Action:

I’ve read a bit about the dyslexia issue, but it seems that there’s a wide variety of faces that can work and that the main issue is having a closed ’a’ and an open ’g’. I’ll have to check...perhaps Comic Sans is the only web-friendly face that has that attribute.

Of course, then there’s the issue as to whether or not the benefit to those with dyslexia outweighs any other potential drawbacks to using Comic Sans.

Paul:

That thread then links to this thread:

http://typophile.com/node/14206

which I actually participated in. ’doh. Gotta work on my memory skills. ;o)

The comments I tended to agree with in that thread were ’kids don’t like to be treated like kids’ and the use of comic sans seems to do just that. It’s almost ’hey, you’re a kid, here’ some rainbows and unicorns and comic sans!’

But that’s just my opinion. Certainly not any sort of research.

The only research that seems compelling is that the youngest children, who are still sounding out their words, depend on simple, recognizable letterforms. And as ugly as Comic Sans is, I guess that’s where it has some appeal, as the letterforms are quite simple.

This site was mentioned:

http://www.kidstype.org/

But when it got to kids opinions, it seemed to leave us hanging:

Discussions with children about these further confirmed that typefaces can have an important effect on how children perceive a text, and hence their motivation to read. Associations can be strong, and there seems to be some comfort for young children in reading things that look familiar or ’normal’. Many of the children we spoke with were able to talk about the differences between the typefaces.

...and!? ;o)

Interesting that the whole concept of kids faces is so new, part of the baby-boom generation’s “kids first” fetishizing that’s gone on recently. The children’s books I grew up with used classic fonts, primer fonts I guess, both serif and sans serif that were very easy to read. Such as Century, Futura, etc.

That said, there are some kid-oriented fonts that I find less in your face than Comic Sans, such as Felt Tip and Providence.

There used to be a show called Wonderama when I was a kid and I remember recoiling at the whole “COME ON KIDS LET’S HAVE FUN!” idea. They gave out Banana bikes as prizes and all I wanted, as a kid, was a big-kids bike.

I don’t think the rules for selecting a typeface should change, regardless of whether or not your audience is children – except that the chosen typeface should perform well at larger sizes. Visual associations transcend age groups.

>that the chosen typeface should perform well at larger sizes.

Why is type in kids books often set bigger? Eyesight degrades with age - we should be setting type at 4pt in children’s books? ;-)

Si

All of the childrens’ books I raed as a child (don’t ask how long ago) were set in normal book fonts. A big one was Century School Book of all things. The only difference was that text was a point size or two larger than usual and leaded more. We learned to read just fine then without being treated like a subculture.
We also read Comic Books for fun but I think normal text type was easier to read than the hand lettered comic book wording. Kids read comic books because they liked the content, not because of the text hand.

ChrisL

With kids I think its more about color than type. Bold, bright colors and shapes. I bet the children don’t even recognize that type is different unless it is set like a newspaper. “Run Dick Run”

Bold, bright colors and shapes.

We’ll, I’m not a kid, and I haven’t done any research, but I find that just as patronizing IMHO. My 4 year old, when he talks of color, talks about all colors. Browns, blacks, greys. He just doesn’t talk about bright red, bright blue and bright yellow. Yet a lot of products aimed at kids assume that’s the only 3 colors in their universe.

I have a hunch that comic sans falls into the same logic that is used to pick colors for kids.

High contrast black, white and red have been studied as good colors for the very young (infants) but I haven’t seen any research beyond that.

In the end, it sounds like there hasn’t been any real research into the pros/cons of comic sans, and, as such, we need to fall back on our own training and point out that it’s an ugly face and no sense using an ugly face when we don’t have to. ;o)

I bet the children don’t even recognize that type is different

Dan...read the last line of the quoted bit I posted above: “Many of the children we spoke with were able to talk about the differences between the typefaces.”

That was interesting. And, also, a bit counter to what I’ve read from adult research, where adults couldn’t often discenr between a sans and serifed face.

Darrel, interesting research you have. Maybe adults are more concerned with content rather than who its presented. My comments were based on when I was a child. All the colors were Red, Blue and Yellow and the fonts were big and standard.

Sounds like a lot of people who make design decisions for children were never children themselves. I really don’t buy the patronizing, oversimplifying twaddle that is presumed to enable children to comprehend, to see, to sense. Simon actually has a point; though children aren’t born with high visual acuity, nor the ability to read, they are tremendously perceptive, curious, and absorbent of their visual surroundings. Their brains process and develop incredibly fast, and they move from one thing to another like ravenous caterpillars. Assuming that subtle colors and 2-storied a’s are wasted on them really sells them short. A lack of imagination on an adult’s part should not hinder a child’s experience. Children have no trouble learning 2 or 3 languages simultaneously. That’s not whistling Dixie!

I find I’m also reverting to the adult pattern of lumping all children of every age together. I bet developmental psychologists perceive dozens of brief distinct stages in development between birth and adolescence.

I think the concern with “infant forms” such as the a in Comic Sans is relevant for a VERY BRIEF PERIOD when children are learning the alphabet, and how to read. I suspect that once that skill has been mastered, suddenly, large print, infant forms and other silliness are completely irrelevant. But don’t tell mom and dad!

gigGle!

Carl’s comment about differing stages of childhood reading development brought to mind something I often struggle with. I wish I remembered the reference but I can’t so I hope this is right. Children only need larger type at the early years of reading when they are learning character recognition, The part I am guessing about is the age. I remember it as about 9 years old (earlier for quick learners). At this point they have developed full visual acuity. Thereafter, size does not matter (type size that is). By middle school, their eyes are as developed as they will ever be. That is why when I am trying to read very small type (serial numbers from a DIMM) I show it to a 12 year old who can see it clear as day unaided. I need more than my trifocals and a magnifying glass to have a prayer.
The problem is I have clients who insist on at least 14pt type for anyone below college age! Even when I try to explain how they are limiting saccadic jumps with such large type and slowing down reading, they don’t care. They say “but this is for kids.”
I wish researchers would come up with something like the “Type Pyramid” where they would definitively establish thresholds of type size for each age group in increments of 5 years.
ChrisL

My comments were based on when I was a child. All the colors were Red, Blue and Yellow and the fonts were big and standard.

Oh, right. I guess my question is was everything bold primary colors because kids responded to that, or were they bold primary colors because adults just assumed that’s what kids wanted? ;o)

they don’t care. They say “but this is for kids.”

Exactly.

So, who wants to start a foundation to research all of this? I imagine we’ll need a few grants... ;o)

Children should learn to write legibly. To that end, what about Seria Sans italic for body text?

http://www.kidstype.org/The%20project/project.html

the Fabula project was made to teach English, Dutch, French, and Spanish speaking children; Basque, Catalan, Frisian, Irish, and/or Welsh.

http://www.kidstype.org/Other%20projects/fabula.html

Yea, that’s the page we’ve been linking to. The Fabula project takes a few more assumptions it seems.

It skipped the ’infantile a’ this time (the argument often used for Comic sans) as they wanted to disinguish from the ’o’. “The font has long ascenders and descenders, and has the informal, friendly feel the Fabula team considers appropriate.”

Again, the informality seems to just be an arbitrary “that’s what we thought they’d like” type of decision.

> Children should learn to write legibly.

Low priority.

hhp

It should be a higher priority. Most people writing here will still have handwriting that is not legible, let alone readable. That’s the work, as Gerrit Noordzij argues, of teachers who believe that letters are not things but pictures of things most closely represented by the forms of Futura. In training in deliberative reading, 14 pt Gill Educational will do nicely. In training in immersive reading, any readable seriffed humanist-axis font at 11-12 point will do. But children should also have reproducible models for handwriting, perhaps offered at a stage between those two, or simultaneously with the second. ’Confusion’, in practice, doesn’t apparently come about: as Noordzij says, children can even tell the difference between lunch and dinner; and it will create some awareness that different styles for letters are possible, and that there can be reasons for preferring one to another.

We no longer read handwriting (except our own post-it notes).
And making good fonts does not require having good handwriting.

It is precisely out of respect for children (as opposed
to some infatuation with a personal, cloyingly nostalgic
preference) that we should waste their time/effort less.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3103421.stm

The romance is over. Let’s find a new one. I nominate notan,
something innate to human reality, as opposed to a byproduct
of a circumstantial invention.

hhp

The practicality of handwriting will last as long as pens are smaller than comfortably-sized keyboards. Having read that article, I agree that there is no need to learn to handwrite well until rather later than is now normal, when it can be done more swiftly.

Good to see you’re sound on the cloying nostalgia question.

In making life pleasant, notan will for many be crucial. I’d say that the pleasure given by seeing and making beautiful writing is always and only the product of notan, and I know no experience of immersion in notan-creation as intense as that in calligraphy: because letters are justifiable in their forms and neutral (being as it were Turing-complete) in their meaning, as other kinds of notan-creation cannot be.

Yes, pens are a lot less cumbersome, but the problem is that what you can do with the results is much more limited compared to results from a keyboard; and handwriting recognition has yet to really take off (for whatever reason). Now, if you could show that improving people’s handwriting by an amount modest enough to make it realistic would cause most handwritings to become machine-readable, and the machines doing the reading would be portable and affordable enough, then I’d be all for that. I simply want people to communicate more and better.

> I know no experience of immersion in notan-
> creation as intense as that in calligraphy

Until you grasp how badly the White is being treated. :-/
To me this is not “justifiable”.

Also: I think we use our hands mostly because it’s practical,
not because it’s “intense”. Yes, it’s more intense than key-
boarding (to most people) but I suspect we’ve overblown this
intensity. Eating is more intense than writing (again to most
people I think) but that doesn’t mean we should rush headlong
into eating a lot all the time. And I can imagine for example
how performing calligraphy with one’s mouth would be much
more intense than with the hands. I’m not kidding - it might
be a very valuable experience to make marks with the more
primordial parts of our bodies!

All this said, I do agree that writing, especially the mindful
kind, can be a very positive thing; which is why I honestly think
calligraphy has a lot going for it, and one of the reasons I took
a calligraphy class last year. What gets my goat though is when
calligraphy is allowed to [continue to] tread on typography.

hhp

Mouth calligraphy sounds a good idea; you’d probably need some kind of toothguard-style grip to get a decent purchase on the brush or pen, but I know mouth-painting works for artists who’ve suffered strokes. As for intensity: when, as recently, severely depressed, calligraphy is the only, only thing that cheers me up. I don’t think ductus or any of the other accidentals of calligraphy are crucial to text type design though - calligraphy is just something a good designer can pretend to be doing (and allow his users to pretend to be doing), like pretending to be Zarathustra when making or, back in the day, using Futura. No good designer has ever really got into a muddle about this - not even Jenson.

Incidentally, I just saw you reference Kallir! My word, I didn’t think anyone else alive had traced our psychogenetics at those daintily slippered feet. Must try and find that book.