Design pioneers from urban city centres all around the world were asked to question the "urban status quo", and the results have been shared in a worldwide event series, the "Smart Urban Stage", featuring the ideas and solutions brought forth by these forward thinking designers. The questions were all based on how to make cities more sustainable and community-based. The contest was judged by trendy Lidewij Edelkoort, the founder of Apparatijk Magne Furuholmen, and designer Graham Hill and within each city, a winner is chosen.
The Amsterdam finalist was Christian Boer, a graphic designer who suffers from dyslexia. People with dyslexia think in pictures, so reading Western typefaces is extremely difficult, because the letterforms are so similar. (Did you know that dyslexia is less common in China then it is in Western countries? Chinese letterforms are pictograms, so it is harder to mix up one from the other!) He designed a new typeface for the project, a typeface with characters less similar to each other, which makes it easier for someone with dyslexia to read. This typeface was then put to the test by the University of Twente, and it was proven that this new font, named "Dyslexie" reduced the number of reading errors. Check out the video of designer Christian Boer after his award was presented to him!
Other cities included in this forward thinking contest are Frankfurt, Milan, Barcelona, Cologne, London, Brussels, Madrid, Paris, Zurich, Rome, and Berlin.
Seeing design based contests like this, with the full focus of the event being on making tomorrow a better world to be a part of makes working to that point seem so much more worthwhile. Designers, now I know, do more then just client work, they are an important piece to the puzzle of a sustainable future. The future is extremely important, and making sure that we all have a fair chance in succeeding, people with a voice like this should make it heard!
source: http://www.smart-urban-stage.com/