Braille Typography from creative director Deon Staffelbach

Deon Staffelbach, a creative director and owner of a branding company, recently started researching whether visually impaired people get to experience unique typographical design and how typography translates to braille.

He found out that only the standard braille ''dot'' was used in building, emergence and elevator signage.

Books written in braille reminded him of lines of code or old computer punchcards.

No variation in the size of the dot, or its hight and variance. As long as the language patterns is correct, he figured that people could get the same message from a stylised shape while adding an extra level information, instead of the standard dot.

Having in mind that it was possible to create a variety of embossed shapes, especially in cards, posters, building signage, he thought of embossing or a letterpress application. 

His first concept is the braille font Constellation. He named it this way because of the patterns it makes when text is written out. He believes that a braille reader would hopefully find it interesting to touch a group of stars that form a line of text.

Also, depending on the emboss on some words, they could act as light or bold faces. Using printing techniques like thermography, foils or varnishes would provide a tactile element of discovery.

His other concepts include braille fonts called Pyramid, the classic braille dot, reshaped into a point using a pyramid and a font named Love with many uses that go beyond Valentines day. Wanting to give blind people the opportunity to enjoy body art like tattoos, he believes that these fonts are great for body modification and scarification.

See the complete project here.