Handfish - The Free Educational Font Suite

Ok, attached below is a set of 10 fonts for educational use.

They include a base font (white) with a 1:1:1 ratio (ascenders = x-height = descenders) such that it mimics handwriting on triple ruled paper as well as tracable (blue), Western stroke order diagram (yellow), lined (red) and shape variants (black) and finally hybrids (names as per subtractive colour mixing) including a tracable lined font at long last.

They're released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The promo PDF attached contains examples of each font.

Tags: font, font suite, typeface, alphabet, print letters, printing, education, educators, home schooling, copyleft, free, handwriting, young learners, x-height equal to ascenders, x-height equal to descenders, creative commons license, educational, sans serif, tracing, traceable, trace, outline, block, sod, stroke order diagram, handfish, tasmania, esl, printables, download, true type, ruled, lined, alpha style lowercase a, single storey lowercase a, modern form lowercase a, no overshoots, open form lowercase g, modern uppercase G, minimalist tail on lowercase l, open 4, children, thanks for reading, please have a nice day!

Q&A

I can't find the download link. What should I do?
This website has a posting requirement to download. Please check the header for the latest site policies. If you just want a quick copy sent to you, you are more than welcome to contact me directly (see below).

What is the current Project Status?
As of 1st January 2012, the status of the project has been downgraded to dormant.

What does this mean?
Well, it means you are still welcome to suggest here, or via email, corrections, or suggestions and I may even fix them! However, since the active maintenance period has ended, there is no longer a concrete guarentee I will release a revision or even reply, although I'll try to do the latter at least. Sorry.

I don't like something. Can't I just do this myself?
Yes! Indeed you can, provided you agree to the non-commercial attribution license and are willing to share-alike.

Can you provide any relevant published research?
Not on the Handfish font suite specifically, no. I lack the resources to even try (although this would be fun!) However, it seems my suspicions have been proven somewhat justified as I have since stumbled upon some actual research. A paper by Diemand-Yauman C. et al. (2010) supports the use of slightly jagged, natural fonts in education as well as bold or italics. From my own rough personal observations at least, I can state my students are improving their letter forms from the times when we used Comic Sans which also meets the criteria of the above research (and you cannot easily generate a traceable variant of that font anyway). Make of this what you will.

Why the silly naming scheme?
Have you seen how wide the font dropdown is in Windows? Take a look, I'll be waiting right here. Ok, back? Once you start listing all the features after the font name such as in the brown font, this width is rapidly exceeded. Plus, tangential learning! The moar you know!

I'm a publisher, dispatcher or other commercial interest. May I use these?
Not under their present license, but the option exists to contact me to arrange something.

Can I please have the raw SFD files?
No.

Why not?
They're released under a CC license, is this not enough? In all seriousness though, those files are somewhat proof of creation and ownership of commercial rights so y'know.

How can I contact you?
Here, or at by email: handfish.font at ye olde gmail dot com.

References:
Diemand-Yauman, C., et al. Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicised): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition (2010)

Related Reading:
Discussion Thread on "Schoolbook Fonts" - Includes arguments against using them.
The Typographic Design Project - Walker et al. provide a regular schoolbook font you may wish to use on your worksheets along with a summary of academic work related to "schoolbook fonts".

These look great!  They will help all teachers who teach young kids.

Paul,
         Thanks for the undertaking!!!!!

Lovely! Thanks so much for sharing.

I would normally use Infant Sassoon, but your typeface opens up a lot of options. It's great.

Wow this is great! I wish I had this when I was making worksheets for Kindergarten back in my hagwon days....

ROT13 Font

Just popping this oddity up lest anyone else desire it. It's an easy way to dump out ROT13 puzzles. Standard font as above, but with upper and lower-case letters shifted 13 characters. To make a puzzle, just type normally, and then change the font. Drop a line of blank spaces in on underneath for the students to transcribe the solution on to and it's an instant puzzle.

What makes me laugh is seeing spell-check functionality is maintained in Word over gibberish. If you want others I can generate them, but really, few would want their font drop-down cluttered with 26 limited use variants.

Pguhyuh sugnta!

Paul, you are a legend! I love your fonts, and I now use them all the time when I make materials for my school. Thanks for the font set!

i just downloaded these fonts, thank you so much for making them and sharing them with all of us!  this will really help my students as i can make better worksheets and materials for them in the future. it's also helpful that i'm able to make traceable letters and then use the spacebar to give the kids a space to practice on afterwards. 

much appreciated, and take care!~

Good question actually!

If you're just using it on a worksheet or PPT, I don't particularly mind. If its, say, a published work like a JLP or DMOE resource book for incoming NETs or something I'd ask that you throw a single line in the blurb page for the sake of the end user should they wish to locate a copy of the fonts for themselves. I'm glad you've found use in these!