Sylexiad is a font created by Rob Hillier, a dyslexic graphic designer from Norwich that is helping people with the condition to read more easily. The typeface is designed to accentuate the characteristics that help dyslexics to distinguish between letters.

It is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in enabling people with the condition to read more easily. Hillier found that in 2000, there was a great interest in the Higher Education sector, and particularly art and design, in dyslexia. He started to question his own reading difficulties as a result and found that he was dyslexic. At the time, there was a recommendation by dyslexia organizations for Arial, Times New Roman and Sassoon Primary.

Hillier decided to identify the factors that have a bearing on how easily dyslexics can read different fonts, and then create a new typeface countering these factors. He designed Sylexiad so that none of the letters is a mirror image of another. In the process of developing this typeface, he gained his PhD. Hillier hopes to find as wide a readership as possible for the font and it has already been taken on as Norwich School of Art and Design’s art school’s official font.