On becoming parents ourselves, we found that other children’s alphabets had no necessary connection between the shape and the sound of a letter. B might have a picture of a balloon; or P a panda. This can be confusing for children. What’s the connection?
Nor do they take into account that in the English alphabet the shape of capital letters and little letters are often different.
This inspired us to look closely at the graphic form of the English alphabet and the way it sounds and makes meaning. From these insights we have developed a vivid way of encouraging children to write and read.
Our system starts with the pictorial quality of the alphabet and in this way encourages an expressive response on the child’s part. He or she wants to draw the picture and say the sound — writing and reading — because the connection between the shape of the letter and the sound is clear and exciting.
Some of our English letters are the same in both capital and little forms (Uu, Oo, Cc, Pp, Ss, Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz); the others are radically different (Aa, Dd, Ee…).
Placement on or below the baseline makes them different too (Pp, Qq, Gg, Jj,) We emphasize this basic, but often overlooked spacial orientation in the design of our pictograms.
Moreover, some of the letters in the English alphabet represent more than one sound. For example “G’ can make both a hard “gg” sound as well as a softer “ja” sound. We build this phonic difference into the characterisation of the letters in Miranda’s Alphabet. So, capital “G” is pictured as Giant Grin and little “g” as giant goldfish in order to include both sounds.
The other examples in the alphabet are capital “C” and small “c” which, because they have the same form are both represented as Circular Cat in Miranda’s Alphabet, reflecting the two different sounds made by the letter “C” – “s” and “k”.
Miranda’s Alphabet uses the actual shapes and sounds of the alphabet, inspiring children to enjoy language from their very first steps.