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http://hdl.handle.net/1942/33569| Title: | STA 100 Award 2020 winner - judges choice - Braille meets emoticons, a visual language for the visually impaired | Contributors/Performers: | VERBAENEN, Walda | Issue Date: | 2020 | Abstract: | Since being established in 1927, the Society of Typographic Arts (STA) has been a vital participant in the Chicago design community. The STA honors the 100 best examples of typographic excellence produced around the globe each year. 'Braille meets emoticons - a visual language for the visually impared', an experimental typographic work of Walda Verbaenen, recieved a STA Award 2020 with judges choice by Juan Pastor Rovira. | Keywords: | Typography;Innovative type and typographic design;experiment;braille | Document URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1942/33569 | Link to publication/dataset: | https://100.sta-chicago.org/winners/2020/braille-meets-emoticons https://100.sta-chicago.org/winners walda@walda.be |
Discipline: | design en architectuur | Research Context: | Braille meets emoticons, a visual language for the visually impaired, was developed by Walda Verbaenen as a typographical experiment. This alphabet tries to make a bridge between a visual language and visually impaired and/or blind people, and appears as a 'Braille Dingbats'. Happy, enthousiastic, sad, combinations of both,... Emoticon images are universal images, used by people who can see, and therefore immediately can show in one character how they feel. But what about people who can see poorly or not? People who have never seen what a face looks like? People who are using the Braille language are forced to use the 26-letter alphabet to describe their emotions. This insight was a starting point for setting up an experimental addition to the existing Braille alphabet, an alphabet based on our emoticons, converted into a ‘dot’ language that characterizes Braille. The original Braille alphabet is built within a grid of 6 dots, and Braille numbers are fitting in a grid of 12 dots. This addition to the Braille alphabet is based on a grid of 9 dots to avoid confusion. 22 of the most common emoticons have been translated into this new Braille grid. The braille 'emoticon' letters are logically structured and could therefore be explained to people who are visually impaired or blind. It has been made as a typographical experiment next to Walda's research, and will be further explored on a later moment. Walda has another awarded project 'Phonotype' which forms the basis of her PhD at READSEARCH PXL Mad School of Arts and University of Hasselt (promotor Prof. dr. Ann Bessemans, co-promotor dr. Kevin Larson), started on 1/1/2020. This PhD, with title 'Phonobet - A new phonetic alphabet' handles the following research question: Can a new visual typographical system, representing the pronunciation of several languages, build a bridge in understanding language related phonemes and thus assists in reading aloud with the correct pronunciation? | Related Info: | Society of Typographic Design Chicago (STA) | Category: | AOR | Type: | Artistic/designerly creation |
| Appears in Collections: | Artistic/designerly creations |
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