#deafdesign

Typeface as Signal // Noise

Three artefacts. Three mediums. Three signals trying to speak:

✴️ A misaligned Adler Tippa S strikes “Input ≠ Comprehension” — a phrase that’s never felt more literal. The faded ink, ghosted characters, and emphasis drift all mirror the translation gap between perception and understanding.

✴️ The EA-450 emboss label shouts “EMBOSS” with unapologetic tactility — a raised voice carved in plastic. It's the analogue version of shouting in all caps.

✴️ Below, the dot matrix printout chants “Set-Up” like an echo in a malfunctioning machine, its barcode alignment lines attempting order, but always just shy of centre.

From these analogue sources, a new Process Zine Typeface System is forming — each font a different signal mode, voice, or glitching fragment of communication:

• SIGNAUX — based on ASCII block grids → For command-line titles, glitch identities, and Ezra signage

• DECODE — derived from dot matrix printer output → For transcript-style text, corrupted captions, and terminal logs

• Duchenne_Modern — built from ASCII + facial glitch expressions → For expressive headings and emotional/system error messages

• EMBOSS — captured from the EA-450 label maker → For section titles, archival labels, warnings

• TIPPA_ECHO — scanned from Adler Tippa S printouts → For memory fragments, fiction quotes, mistranslations

• THERMALITE — sampled from Epson receipt paper → For receipts, logging systems, glitch overlays

🗂️ SITE PATCHED processzine.org updated. Terminal mode enabled.

☍ SIGNALS WITHOUT SIGNALLING Found language, orphaned function.

These four vintage railway lever plates — once a crucial part of rail signalling infrastructure — now exist as silent glyphs. Disconnected from their purpose, they whisper in a forgotten code: UP MAIN DISTANT DISC FOR No.8 30 | 31 | 53

Captured in close-up and blur, they evoke something between brutalist signage, manual glitch poetry, and analogue UI. Captionless captions for a system no longer in use.

🛠 Potential uses: – Affixed to the glitch lab cage – Embedded in Process Zine #00 as a visual break or coded spread – Framed as wall text beside The Interpreter (Ezra) – A sculptural piece commenting on miscommunication, signal loss, or auditory delay

No one ever mentioned brain lateralisation when I was approved for a cochlear implant.

Not the surgeon. Not the audiologist. Not the literature.

I chose the left side because it seemed weaker. But in hindsight, I may have digitised the wrong half of myself.

Here’s what’s often left unsaid:

The left ear feeds into the right hemisphere (intuition, pattern, analogue).

The right ear feeds into the left hemisphere (language, logic, decoding).

I was born deaf, developed APD, and relied on visual comprehension from the start.

My brain wired itself around sound—using sight, captions, and pattern recognition.

So what happens when you inject digital, high-frequency, artificial sound into a hemisphere never built to process speech?

More input. Less understanding. More noise. Louder tinnitus. Sensory overload. Misophonia.

Signal is lost in translation—not because the implant is faulty, but because the wiring was never accounted for.

Where are the studies on this?

Why isn’t laterality—especially for older CI patients with APD or visual-first language mapping—ever mentioned?

Why are we still treating deafness as a deficit of ears, instead of a reconfiguration of the whole sensory system?

It might be time to start asking these questions out loud.

I’m considering drafting a speculative white paper. Working title:

Crossed Wires: Rethinking Laterality in Cochlear Implantation for APD & Prelingual Deafness

// page 888. subtitles on. still can’t read it.

This is what listening feels like with APD: glitch in the feed letters out of phase the sentence never lands.

Ceefax: a ghost system. Subtitles: a safety net. But the words still drown in noise.

Post 003: Captioned Workspaces

Designing in silence. Capturing the signal. Losing it again.

These are the early scaffoldings of Process // Issue #00 — UI overlays, digital interference, software rulers, captioned fragments. Even the screenshots are documented from outside the machine. Grain, moiré, blur. A noisy meditation on clean design.

Somewhere between ‘say again?’ and ‘processed by DSP’.

Type is lowercase by choice. Layouts glitch into caption logic. Even the folders have names that echo back: 888 Process Zine.