We are often asked to use braille in our design for the arts and it has been a very interesting and fulfilling task. Designers ring us up and ask, ‘How do you do it?’. This is both flattering and frustrating as we have worked out our own method using simple problem solving and experimentation – which is what design is fundamentally about, and any designer (problem solver) of any worth should be able to get someway to solving it. This is how we got heralded as ‘Groundbreaking!’ by the Arts Council of England.
Creating braille for mainstream print is a painstaking process but the results are stunning. This method of creating/translating and producing print-runs in braille which we developed as part of our work in the arts arena has been taken out by topright into the wider community, producing braille for larger companies such as Merlin Entertainments Group for one of their theme parks, Chessington World of Adventures.
Our latest braille project is for a theatre production for the UK’s only professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists. Extant explore new creative territories from a visually impaired perspective. The wonderful thing about braille is the way that it can work alongside design, complimenting without interupting it, creating a hidden message and a great matrix texture. Giving the sighted an extra dimension, whilst providing access to the visually impaired. There is no getting away from it, not only is braille a vital communication process for visually impaired it is also a very cool design element that just isn’t used enough. We are very lucky to be able to have projects that enable us to produce this overlooked graphic and visual communication. After all we deal in graphic communication, so why wouldn’t we use it?