So good in every way – bookworm
If you or your child are dyslexic, we totally recommend this book, The Illustrated Guide To Dyslexia and Its Amazing People it really is SO GOOD IN EVERY WAY, from the design, layout, and graphics to the great content – it’s an excellent read and will help you to understand the complexities and celebrate the positives of dyslexia.
The authors, Kate and Kathy are amazing people – truly great mates, and I really want to tell you all about their venture – so I asked them to SHARE what they’ve been up to. read on…. (oh, and btw, it’s not just you, the word dyslexic, is one of the hardest words for me to spell – I literally have to check it each time I type it – interestingly 1 in 10 people are dyslexic – I BET you know someone who has dyslexia right?)
Dyslexia HASHTAGS
Kate and Kathy are keen to see you and your Amazing Dyslexic on instagram – and are encouraging you to use the hashtag #AmazingDyslexic – Monday 7th October to Sunday 13th October 2019 (post updated for 2019) is Dyslexia Awareness Week with a hashtag #positivedyslexia2019; As well as #sgiew_bookworm.
Over to Kate and Kathy….
“We can’t believe it ourselves!
But we have written a book all about Dyslexia, and are now working on book TWO. Whoop whoop!!
It’s called ‘The Illustrated Guide To Dyslexia and Its Amazing People’.
And the super Amazing architect Richard Rogers kindly wrote our foreword.
We are very proud of it, its taken 3 years in the making, and our purpose we feel has been fulfilled.
We wanted to help dyslexics of all ages understand what dyslexia means for them using ‘not too many words’
on each page in-sync with some simple graphics, humours photography and some very clear messages.
We both have dyslexic children, and know the heartache that comes along with watching your child try so hard at school and not achieving the results maybe their friends are. This can be very confident eroding for a young child not understanding why all their efforts are ‘not enough’ to keep up.
So we set to work putting our creative backgrounds to full use creating a beautiful book that celebrated being dyslexic.
There are so many advantages to being a dyslexic, yet most of the dyslexia books available focus on the negative, use academic lingo, crammed with words, and incredibly hard to read and comprehend. Our mission was to deliver an upbeat, simple to understand, beautifully designed book. The child can customise it too, making it their own personalised copy, by filling in the boxes at the bottom of each page, helping them understand more about how dyslexia affects them.
Where did the idea come from?
When you find out your child is dyslexic, you want to help them as much as you can, you want to explain to them what dyslexia really is.
The books we obtained to answer this question were very academic, we ourselves found them difficult to decipher and understand. So Kate one
day said ‘Why don’t we design a beautiful book about dyslexia’. It all started from there, we both have dyslexic husbands and they are both doing
amazing things, Kate’s husband works at the RCA and Kathy’s is Creative Director of an international mobile phone company.
How does your ‘dyslexic’ book differ from others in the same field?
The answer is in the title. The Illustrated Guide to Dyslexia And Its Amazing People.
Where most dyslexic books are text heavy and use poor illustrations, our book uses ’not too many words’ and is well designed.
The illustrations were just as important as the words, although the imagery is humours and charming they are there reinforcing the information,
especially if you are trying to engage a child that doesn’t enjoy reading. We spent ages trolling through photo libraries looking for the perfect image, then we would re-touch and manipulate the picture in Photoshop to fit into our graphic language.
Our book conveys a positive attitude towards dyslexia and we think all dyslexics are Amazing!!!
Where did you collect all your Amazing Dyslexics that feature in the last chapter of the book?
It’s amazing when you start talking to people about dyslexia, everyone knows someone who is dyslexic, if they are not dyslexic themselves.
We also went to several design events, one we targeted was the London Design Festival, in Kings Cross, where a ‘red hut’ dedicated to designers who were dyslexic exhibited their products, that’s where we met the wonderful Jim Rokos who founded dyslexic design and Ab Rogers, spacial designer, they are both in the book, amongst other Amazing people we met there.
Do your children have a better understanding of dyslexia now?
Definitely, they have been our wonderful case studies!
They have had to deal with all our interrogations, we needed to properly understand how our children saw words and letters disappear, move around, ‘swim’ off the page when they were reading, and each child experienced something different, it was fascinating.
We would design a page, using not too many words illustrating a dyslexic ‘point’ and asked them if it made sense, could they fathom out what we were trying to communicate.
What was it like meeting the Architect Richard Rogers?
We were both incredibly nervous walking towards the The Leadinghall Building (fondly known as The Cheesegrater) where Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners are based.We had A3 print outs of our book pages and a short introduction practiced! Upon arrival we were shown around by Richard’s lovely PA. Jo, we were immediately put at our ease. The practice itself is big, surrounded by 360 degree views over the City, with grass green flooring and colourful chairs it felt like a fun place to work. We were then introduced to Richard in one of the glass meeting rooms, he was dressed in a magenta shirt and green trousers he looked amazing and was the most charming man we’ve ever met. He loved the book and only said positive things about it, he also touched briefly upon how dyslexia affected himself as a child too. I think both of us, (Kate and Kathy) left the meeting feeling slightly smitten!”
So Good in Every Way
GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED, thank you for taking the time to enter!
So – to join in with ‘so good in every way’ for Autumn/Winter Term 2017 follow their account @amazingdyslexic (as well as mine, @incredibusy, and @sogoodineveryway – and my #sgiew buddy @willowdaygram) add the hashtags #sgiew and #sgiew_bookworm to your photos over the next month for a chance to win your own hard back copy of their book The Illustrated Guide To Dyslexia and Its Amazing People, AND a VIP invite to the book launch in London on the 29th September 2017, with a couple of glasses of bubbly, and of course – amazing speakers, Jim Rokos, Ab Rogers and Sean Douglas The CodPost. Kate and Kathy will be looking for their favourite nine photographs to feature on our instagram grid, and one lucky winner will be joining us on the 29th!
More info here: www.amazingdyslexic.com
Follow Kate and Kathy on Facebook facebook.com/AmazingDyslexic/
and Instagram instagram.com/amazingdyslexic/
And of course – order here: The Illustrated Guide To Dyslexia and Its Amazing People
Kate and Kathy are the subject of our return to ‘so good in every way’ for Autumn/Winter Term 2017 – let’s get that going – follow their account @amazingdyslexic (as well as mine, @incredibusy, and @sogoodineveryway – and my sgiew buddy @willowdaygram) add the hashtags #sgiew and #sgiew_bookworm to your photos over the next month for a chance to win your own hard back copy of their book The Illustrated Guide To Dyslexia and Its Amazing People, AND a VIP invite to the book launch in London on the 29th September 2017, with a couple of glasses of bubbly, and of course – amazing speakers, Jim Rokos, Ab Rogers and Sean Douglas The CodPost.
I love the sentiment behind this book. I’ve come to think of my own dyslexia as a super power – it has actually made me much better at my job and often when working in teams it works well having someone who thinks a bit differently. Will be ordering a copy!