Twinkl Sans

evolving educational environment

Twinkl resources occupy a rapidly evolving educational environment, where educators and parents are increasingly engaged in tailoring student journeys with dedicated learning resources. Twinkl’s approach is reflected by its new branding typeface, an important educational tool that supports consistent and clear documents for learners from early years to KS2. The brief for the custom typeface required a lively and friendly appearance on the page, while enabling well-structured documents that cover the full range of educational material in the curriculum, in print and on screen.

The aim was to balance a wide range of requirements, from different use scenarios (from early reading to complex worksheets) to the robustness required to accommodate a wide range of printers and screens across mobile and desktop environments. In these respects, the Twinkl typeface is pioneering: not only did it integrate in the design process the widest possible range of stakeholder feedback, it is also the only typeface of its kind developed specifically with the current document platforms in mind.

The key design parameters of the typeface were not decided in a vacuum: it closely follows the specifications for teaching letter shapes in the UK, which allows it to be used for both reading and writing exercises. This functionality is enhanced by including both cursive and typographic versions of letters such as a, e, f, g and k, among others, in the same family. This allows educators to create documents that are tailored to specific learning tasks, and customise the documents for different learner groups. Enabling this within a single type family is an important element for meeting the multiple requirements of a typeface for early-years education.

The overall design of the typeface is typographically accomplished, combining technical proficiency for longer and complex documents. It appears lively, friendly, and approachable to young children, while enabling a smooth transition to longer texts and independent reading in later years. The typeface also includes a range of coordinated symbols and marks that are required in educational resources,  ensuring that documents maintain a consistent and distraction-free typographic environment.

At the same time, the typeface has a distinctive personality that allows it to carry the Twinkl brand across documents and platforms with confidence and clarity. By combining a valuable educational tool with a powerful branding asset, Twinkl’s new typeface family becomes a highly visible marker for quality and identity.