NRSI: Computers & Writing Systems
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New!!!! (20 April 2015)
New Andika New Basic font now available. Andika New Basic is a limited-character-set version of Andika that includes a full family of styles (Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold-Italic).
'Very good font for kids learning to read/write. Most glyphs are similar to hand-written letters (a, g, t, etc.)'
Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another.
A sans serif font is preferred by some literacy personnel for teaching people to read. Its forms are simpler and less cluttered than those of most serif fonts. For years, literacy workers have had to make do with fonts that were not really suitable for beginning readers and writers. In some cases, literacy specialists have had to tediously assemble letters from a variety of fonts in order to get all of the characters they need for their particular language project, resulting in confusing and unattractive publications. Andika addresses those issues.
One font from this typeface family is included in this release:
What are the benefits of using Andika?
Clear, simply designed letters. This facilitates letter recognition, a skill second only to distinguishing sounds in learning to read. Some fonts have letters that look like mirror images of each other, which for a new reader can be confusing. Andika gives those similar letters distinct characteristics to reduce confusion. The differences are so small that most people would not notice them, but those small differences give the brain a little help. We also applied these differentiation techniques throughout all of the hundreds and thousands of glyphs in the font, so that even those writing systems that use rare symbols can benefit.
Extensive character coverage. Andika has over 4,700 glyphs, providing support for more than 2,100 characters in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. This means it's suitable for literally hundreds of languages around the world.
Letter designs now set
After receiving many insightful comments on the Andika Design Review and Basic fonts, we have refined Andika's final letterforms, with alternate shapes still available for some characters.