Cursive for Dysgraphia
AN EXPERIMENTAL WORKBOOK
The following showcases the practical result of my Honours Degree research project, completed in November 2021.
Frankly, this was the most challenging and arduous project I had embarked on during my career, both academically and professionally, to date. Even so, I don’t regret any of it. From the highs of conceptual development to the lows of drudging through countless academic articles to back up my design decisions, my journey through this project was something I look back fondly on; if not only for all it taught me about the creative process, at the scale and depth required for academia.
With this showcase, I aim to take you through the processes I went through to bring myself and my work across the finish line, and to hold in my hands the final result of two years of hard work, many late nights staring at dimly lit computer screens (and pretending I didn’t have a full day of work the next day), and weekends spent drawing with a bottomless cup of coffee to my left.
The early days
With the nature of my course split over two years in a part-time format, spanning from February 2020 to November 2021, time seemed to flow very slowly at first and then very fast when my work caught momentum. Many of the early months, in between elective subjects that taught me aspects of user experience design, creative (and academic) writing, and basic business skills amongst others, the ideas of what I might do for my final project lingered.
As a lettering artist, I imagined grand murals and poetic calligraphy workshops very early on. I had no idea what I was going to teach in them, or what I would paint on those imaginary walls, but I allowed myself to get lost in the romance of countless ideas. Eventually, the reality of my environment, from timelines to my access to any prerequisite resources, whittled away many of my grander ideas; and allowed me to settle on a few that were far more tangible and realistic.
One should always be allowed to dream, but remain mindful of where the line must be drawn.
Sometime in late 2020, I had a working concept that I could take into my final year; with enough precedent research to show it had legs, and enough of a gap in the literature to allow me the opportunity to bring something new to the table.
And that, my friend, was where the real work began.
Throughout the early months of 2021, with the help of my supervisor and the incessant oversight of our research and ethics committee, I finally had a concrete topic that I could not only run with and see where it took us, but also something I could guarantee I’d have some fun with along the way.
“An exploration of using instructional graphic design and calligraphy principles in aiding recently diagnosed dysgraphia”
SUPPORTED BY NEUROLOGICAL LITERATURE
I know, not the flashiest topic in the world, and perhaps not one that would inspire debate on my dating profile, but academia is what it is and what it has always been. Direct, and without much poise.
It took a while to work and rework my topic, with failures in some places and successes in others, but I’m happy with the outcome. If nothing else, that process taught me a great deal about narrowing something down. From something grand and outrageously ambitious to something tangible and realistic.
Allow me to elaborate
A question I frequently get when I bring this project up in conversation is, “what is dysgraphia?” And I don’t blame you if this is something you’ve been wondering right now, because it’s not something that’s often spoken about.
In fact, here in South Africa, we don’t have an official definition for it. The research surrounding it is in short supply, and the methods and means to diagnose it are as elusive as the condition itself.
However, dysgraphia can best be described as a developmental learning disorder, characterised primarily by illegible writing, and is very closely linked to its fraternal twin, dyslexia.
Kind of like the image below.
This image is simply a graphic representation, and not necessarily what dysgraphia looks like all the time. It can look more legible, and it can also look considerably less legible. That’s the tricky thing about it. It’s very hard to spot.
During my research, I found that dysgraphia, while characterised by poor spelling, letter spacing and overall composition, can very easily be misdiagnosed by inadequate attention to one’s writing, poor posture or even just trying to write too fast.
It’s very difficult to diagnose, and often goes unnoticed until much later in a person’s academic or professional life where these issues can no longer be avoided or compensated for.
That particular conundrum is, unfortunately, an educational therapist’s concern, and way beyond the scope of my project; so instead, I focused on what can be done once it is diagnosed.
And thus, my primary practical output was born:
“A procedural cursive handwriting workbook, influenced and driven by principles of instructional design, and exercise design frameworks”
BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP TO FOCUS ON DYSGRAPHIA
I know, it’s a lot of jargon, and I even I was skeptical at first as to what this would result in, let alone what it would look like. But, I now had a target, and that was exactly what I needed to focus my practical attention and narrow the research I needed to do to get it done in the time I had remaining.
To this end, I needed to understand what dysgraphia is, at its core, and what is successfully done to treat it in a general sense. I conducted interviews with educational therapists, reviewed countless academic articles and publications from neurology and psychology to designing for education, and it all led me to one glaring success: cursive.
It’s a simple form of writing, but that’s what makes it so brilliant.
I explored cursive’s developmental history, from the Mesopotamians, circa. 3200 BC, who developed cuneiform to communicate transcriptionally for the first recorded time in human history, all the way to the famous Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne’s Carolingian Minuscule, in the early 9th Century.
Cursive’s base form hasn’t changed much since then, and formed the foundation of all Latin script calligraphy and lettering that we know today. This, in part, is because of its incredibly simple nature; using rounded shapes, slanted movement, and connected ligatures.
Many of us won’t remember how we learned to write when we were originally taught, but more than likely this was how you first began to transcribe your words into written form. Cursive’s simplicity is why it's rarely remembered, but ironically its simplicity is why it’s so powerful, and why it’s used so often in dysgraphia treatment programs.
This, fuelled by my own love for all forms of hand lettering, is why I chose to make it the foundation for the practical output of my project; which also gave me the opportunity to understand it even more.
Of course, I could write about this forever, which I have, in a 20,000+ word dissertation already; so I won’t bore you with too many more details. What I really want to show you, is what that dissertation lead to, and what I’m so proud to share is the result of all the work that went into it.
So, without further ado, welcome to my Cursive Writing Workbook for Dysgraphia.
Practical Research and Development
Final results never come from nowhere. In fact, ones that actually mean something usually come from a great deal of research and development behind the scenes. This project was no exception.
I knew that in order to design for individuals with dysgraphia, I had to first understand what exactly they struggle with and how best to design a workbook that could help them overcome those things.
That research took a number of directions, but it began with understanding workbooks, and what makes them successful at heart. This led me to research flow strategies that guide learners through a workbook themselves, without the help of someone else to guide them.
That research looked a little bit like this:
Understanding flow strategies allowed me to build a framework that I could build upon for greater sections of the workbook. They allowed for any learning content to be scalable, regardless of what the exercises in question would be.
After all, I had no real idea of what those exact exercises would be, because that research came sometime later, but I knew that I had a framework I could apply them to when the time was right.
This research then led me to how you design for flow, from how to layout information to how one piece of content could transition to the next. There’s no steadfast way to do this, ironically, because our own unique experiences with learning content dictate how we approach the next, but there was one set of rules that I found cropping up substantially, no matter where I looked:
Grids.
To most designers, this might seem like a no-brainer, but we often overlook just how useful they can be when applied strategically across a document.
For instance, designing a single double-page spread is not the same as designing a 200-page document. If it was, then there’d be far more well-designed books out there, but alas, there aren’t. This is because when we spend a lot of time with a single document we begin to subconsciously learn its design patterns, which we then begin to anticipate; and when those anticipations are met with resistance we have a difficult experience with the document as a whole.
Grids allow us to apply layout rules across a vast amount of pages, virtually and physically. From some initial research, I realised early on that my document was going to be extensive, so I knew that grids were going to play an integral role in the success of my workbook. They also afforded a great opportunity to test layouts and different types of grids very easily early on, where I explored scamped wireframes.
They looked a little like this, where I experimented with scalable grid layouts and how each exercise might flow into the next; something that proved monumentally useful in the coming months as began to finally design the document digitally.
Beyond these explorations, I needed to understand what I should focus on when I started designing the workbook itself.
From colour to typography, even the potential of a dedicated style guide, I explored reasonable inclusions that I anticipated would be necessary from my experience as a graphic designer and all the resources I had visited prior to this development.
Once I had these pointers down, I knew I was another step closer to working with the real thing. Combined with my previous explorations into grid structures and flow strategies, I had a solid idea of how this could help my designs later.
So, I took these explorations a step further and wireframed the majority of my layouts that I anticipated being necessary.
If I’m being honest, during this research and development process I often felt like I was spending far too much time planning and not enough time executing. The irony of this, though, is that at this level of research projects, especially in academia, one can never plan enough.
At this level, you’re only really limited by the time you have available, but if you use that time wisely it can compound your work’s success where it could easily have halted it without.
Measure twice, cut once.
This is something that I told myself (more than I’d like to admit) during this project. From the written research at the very beginning to the design research towards the end, when you spend enough time working with something before you actually work with it, your confidence in it builds dramatically.
And when you can design with confidence, knowing you put the leg-work in beforehand instead of diving blindly into the bottomless abyss that designing something can often be, you can wade the waters far more calmly and strategically than you would have otherwise.
I thank my supervisor for his patience with me, and for guiding me along this research and development process. Without him, I likely would have dived head first into something I didn’t understand or appreciate the real process for.
I suppose that’s what education is for at the end of the day, to learn something.
The style guide
Exploring frameworks was one thing, but I realised that if I was going to design a workbook dedicated to a very specific type of learner, someone with a neurological learning disorder, I had to build a system for myself.
I also realised that if someone else was to continue this workbook and its potential without me, they would need something to guide them.
Thus, the style guide was born.
One of the first questions you might be asking now is, “what the hell is the Olive Bridge?” And to answer that fully, I’d have to take you on a journey. But, we don’t have the patience for that, so for the sake of your attention span and your internet connection, I’ll give you the short version.
The Olive Bridge is a fictitious company that I developed for this project, with a single goal in mind: to bridge the gap that learners with dysgraphia feel amongst their peers, by offering an olive branch in the form of dedicated learning materials.
From individual experiences to societal ones, anyone with a learning disability has a substantially more difficult time learning what others around them seem to do almost effortlessly. And so, the more learning materials that are designed specifically for these individuals, the greater our collective impact of granting these learners an easier life ahead.
Beyond developing this name, there were a number of key aspects that were covered and designed for within my style guide:
- Colour palette
- Typography
- Tone and voice
- Imagery
- Print recommendations
Considerable research went into these 5 points, which then formed the foundation of my style guide.
Arguably, this guide has its own potential to grow and develop into something greater with more time and research, something at the time that I didn’t have the capacity for. That being said, these points provided a fantastic foundation for a proof of concept, which could easily be applied to learning materials.
Each element of the style guide was designed with a very specific focus toward learners with learning difficulties.
Colours were chosen that promote learning, confidence and action. Typefaces were chosen with an appreciation for the difficulties that dysgraphic learners face when reading, often with dyslexia playing an unfortunately strong role.
In fact, beyond the main body copy typeface, which I decided would be Open Sans for its open-source usefulness and easy-to-read nature, I developed my own typeface based on Open Sans for the title and heading usage, called Open Hands. This featured a more hand-illustrated approach to Open Sans, as a nod to showing how writing isn’t always so perfect, and its uniqueness be loved for what it is.
Typographic layouts were also a key focus, because without a proper guide for setting my type, readers could have a very difficult time using the workbook; regardless of how pretty it’s designed. Function beats form in this realm, something I learned very quickly during the earlier development stages of both my style guide and the workbook itself.
Voice and tone were also developed with a focus on how to approach learners with dysgraphia, or any learning disorder for that matter: with openness and playfulness. Within the style guide, I provided useful tables that showed do’s and don’ts for how to use the voice and tone, something that visually explains them far better than a simple sentence would do.
Imagery guidelines were then designed with a focus on clarity and space. Visual clutter is incredibly detrimental within these learning materials, so if nothing else, less if very often more.
The illustration style was also something developed with great attention. As an illustrator, my mind was racing with possibilities for this category of the style guide, and I inevitably settled on a simple fact: empathic design works wonders.
I, therefore, designed my illustration style to be very hand-drawn in order to quell the lack of confidence that many learners with dysgraphia often feel in their writing. My hopes are that when an exercise or a drawing is shown without perfection, without clean edges and smooth curves, it shows the learner that none of us are perfect. And when we can embrace these imperfections, we can begin to focus on the work, and not what it looks like at the beginning.
As the final point, the print recommendations in the guide provided actionable pointers for when a learning material is brought to life in the physical world. We can always design for screens, but the physical world has its own unique challenges that one must traverse in order to make a lasting impact.
From the colour of the pages to print on to the thickness and coating of the paper itself, these recommendations exist to guide a designer (myself later on) in how to allow these materials to have their maximum impact once printed, with a keen focus on learners with dysgraphia and dyslexia.
As a fun inclusion, I made sure that about 99% of the style guide was designed using the guidelines themselves. From the typography to the images and grids, the guide was built using the guide. I love that irony.
The main attraction
While my style guide could be considered the most fundamental practical deliverable of my project, it was by no means the final result. That, was my workbook.
Disclaimer: The image on the right-hand page is not my own, and is instead sourced from here.
Cursive itself is an incredibly useful tool in teaching handwriting, which is why it’s used so extensively in foundation-phase schooling programs. It’s also one of the most widely used practical writing interventions used in treating dysgraphia, which is why it formed the foundation of my main deliverable.
However, where this workbook sets itself apart from the sheer multitude of cursive handwriting workbooks in the market currently, is its unique inclusion of using calligraphy principles in each of the exercises.
More notable, the two principles of intention and beauty. When intention is an active part of something that we do, we begin to pay more attention to the finer details. A form of mindfulness, almost.
In particular, many learners with dysgraphia struggle because they don’t understand the unique relationships of letterforms, from their anatomy to the ligatures that connect one letter to another. The intention that calligraphic writing brings to the table promotes a greater focus on these details, which naturally improves muscle memory, something that is specifically used to help with dysgraphia.
Funnily enough, with enough practice, the natural result of this intention is beauty. And as any artist will be able to tell you, when one approaches what they’re doing from an artistic perspective, you begin to appreciate what you’re doing. Appreciation then fosters confidence, something that many dysgraphic learners don’t experience with their writing; and when confidence improves, so does writing efficiency. This intention and beauty, therefore, create a positive feedback loop, something that lacks considerably in many cursive writing teaching tools.
From the perspective of these principles, the workbook was structurally designed as a segmentation of four stages. Based on case study research, as well as research into self-guided exercise design, these stages increase in difficulty with each one, incrementally growing the abilities of the learner and building their confidence along the way.
Many cursive writing materials feature a similar path of progression, from teaching individual letters to words and sentences. But, what makes my workbook unique, is in its first stage, titled Basic Moves.
This is where two things happen. The first is that the learner is introduced to what makes cursive such a powerful form of writing, specifically in its natural loops and slanting. Each of these fundamentally contributes to the learner’s success in their writing.
Regretfully, this is something that is often omitted from many cursive teaching materials that I encountered in my original research, providing another reason why more materials like this should exist out in the world, but unfortunately don’t.
The second thing that happens in this first stage, is that the learner is introduced to the process that they would come to know and love throughout the rest of the workbook.
This process was specifically developed using a combination of research into teaching learners with learning disabilities, a case study into another cursive writing workbook, and the result of interviews personally conducted with educational therapists here in South Africa.
The reason why this process is so important, and why it was introduced so early in the book, is that it’s applied to each and every stage that comes afterward.
In part, this process promotes pattern recognition, which helps a learner guide themselves through a workbook like this on their own. It’s also important, and explained in detail, because for a process to be effective, it needs to be understood and how a learner would expect to see it later on.
Repetition, repetition, repetition. It’s how we learn anything, with practice and time.
All-in-all, the workbook sits on a total of 144 pages, laid out over 72 A4 double-page spreads. This may seem like a lot, and it is, which is why those grids I spoke about earlier came in so handy, but it pales in comparison with what it could be.
In part, this was due to time constraints on the project as a whole, and the amount of research and design that I could put into it before my fingers exploded. Therefore, I developed my workbook to exist purely as a proof-of-concept.
As an untested teaching material for a very specific learning disability, it would have also been arrogant to design an entire workbook without being able to test its intricacies and nuances; something that may come later and with the correct ethical guidance and supervision.
Taking that into account, my measly 144 pages could easily become considerably larger, as the framework I developed is applied across a multitude of individual exercises.
Therefore, like with the style guide, the potential is huge for what a workbook like this might be someday. For now, though, I’m incredibly proud of what I showed it could be.
Cherries on the cake
Unfortunately, projects like this tend to lean toward the cold and concrete-like world of academia, and less toward a fun-loving creative one. So, to keep me sane during the course mine, I made sure to build in parts that would fuel my creative aspirations as well as my academic ones.
Three of which I would like to pay special attention to.
The first of which, was a hand-drawn calligraphic cursive typeface, spanning the entirety of the basic, lowercase Roman alphabet.
This particular inclusion featured prominently within the second, third, and fourth stages of the workbook, where it was used to showcase examples of writing for learners to follow.
For example, the first four individual letters were used to show a learner how the formation of a cursive letter should look, from its beginning stroke, to its loops and turns, and finally in where it ends on the baseline again.
Not only did this typeface provide a helpful visual cue of how to create each letter individually, something that is also omitted from many other cursive writing materials, but it also provided me with an opportunity to stretch my own calligraphic muscles.
An opportunity that I loved every minute of.
The second cherry worth mentioning is a fully 4-way, infinitely repeatable pattern, also hand-drawn, comprised entirely of olives and leaves. This pattern also provided a platform to express the various colours used throughout the workbook in a way that felt comfortable in its repetition, while remaining fresh in its application.
To show you an example of this in action, I present my favourite cherry on this cake, a series of seven hand-lettered and illustrated quotes.
Each quote was designed by hand and woven into the main repeatable pattern you can see in the eighth image.
These quotes were sprinkled throughout the workbook at various points I believed they would be well received. From encouragement at the beginning of the book, to words of congratulation at the end of each individual stage.
Here’s a little WIP, because I can’t not record a little behind-the-scenes from time to time.
This was some prototype lettering for one of my original cover designs for the workbook, that didn’t manage to make the final cut.
Here’s a super close-up of the sketches for that prototype lettering.
This is what a normal night-in-the-life of this project looked like. Late nights spent in front of my little home office setup with a Steri Stumpie (out of view) to keep me going.
I’d very often get lost in these evenings down the rabbit hole of late-night design work, where the only thing to keep you aware of the time is your neighbour’s pool pump going off at midnight or your own stomach growling to remind you that you haven’t eaten yet.
Hand-drawing the repeat pattern was challenging, making sure that no matter what I drew could always repeat in any direction. These drawings always start on my iPad, but they never end there. After this, it moved to Illustrator where I perfected the edges and repeatable elements, and from there into InDesign where it was put to the test in it’s designed-for environment.
All in all, the result of countless hours spent either in front of my laptop kerning type, my iPad drawing olives and leaves, and on my bed trying to fall asleep without always thinking about this workbook, I’m proud of what it all came together to create.
To the real world, this workbook only exists as a prototype, and in academia, the project in its entirety only forms a proof-of-concept; however, to me it means far more than both of those things.
Not only was I able to research and design a project that combines neurology with education design through the power of cursive, but I was able to do that over what was practically a two-year period of the most difficult time for my generation to study anything.
Ironically, what made these two years so challenging was also what helped me stay sane during the pandemic and professional and financial depressions we’ve all experienced since the beginning of 2020.
So to everyone who helped me keep my hands drawing, my head on my shoulders, and my eyes on the prize, I owe you the biggest of thank you’s.
With everything I learned just from you, consider me honoured.
