Rosemary Sassoon has been involved in letterforms all her life. Trained as a designer and scribe she later developed methods of teaching lettering before moving to handwriting research. She was awarded the degree of Ph D from the department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading for her research into the effects of models and teaching methods on the way children learn to join up their handwriting. The project that resulted in the Sassoon family of typefaces came about when she discovered that no research had been undertaken to find out from children themselves what kind of letters they found easiest to read. Young children were found to be amazingly articulate. Their judgements and comments were instrumental in the design of Sassoon Primary. This work is documented in Computers and Typography.
This is an ongoing project. As the typefaces spread around the world, both to publishers and to be installed in school computers, the need for even more alternative letterforms arose. The sans serif family filled a real need for maximum legibility particularly on screen and highlighted the fact that few designers have faced up to the reality that designing for the computer screen is a new discipline with different criteria for letterforms. Now the interest is in a joined font that will be variable enough to satisfy the needs of advertisers, and educationists around the world in countries that have varying perceptions of letterforms.
Rosemary Sassoon continues as a consultant in the educational and medical aspects of handwriting while concentrating increasingly on the problems of modern communication. The layout of the screen, the relationship of illustration to text, the multi cultural aspects of letters for reading and writing as well as the impact of the computer on iconic communication all vie for attention. She continues to lecture widely, and writes and advises on the subjects that come within her areas of interest.
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by Adrian Williams Design Ltd
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