Andersen

11 invented punctuation marks designed to cue vocal tone in read-aloud children's books

Andersen is a typeface designed by Thierry Fétiveau and released in 2018 by 205tf, conceived to address the absence of typefaces suited to children's literature—particularly books intended to be read aloud. Its most distinctive feature is a system of 11 new punctuation marks that, like Spanish inverted punctuation, appear at both the start and end of sentences to signal emotional tone. Letterforms were also shaped to aid dyslexic readers by sharpening distinctions between visually similar characters. Low contrast across the family supports use at display, text, and caption sizes.

Set in Andersen

Insights

The complementary punctuation system is modelled on Spanish double punctuation logic, placing expressive glyphs at sentence start and end.
Disambiguation of mirror-pair characters (b/d/p/q and 6/9) was a deliberate design constraint for dyslexic legibility.
The design synthesises the Humanes model with contemporary elements to introduce softness while maintaining low stroke contrast.
Low contrast enables a single family to function across titles, body text, and captions without stylistic inconsistency.