The News Literacy Project and J. Walter Thompson New York are looking to fight the ongoing problem of fake news with a campaign that includes a newly created sideways-facing font.
"We're hoping the campaign gets people to really take the time to read and think about what they're reading before they share it and keep it going," said Aaron Padin, head of art and design at JWT New York. "We're inundated with headlines every day, and we've become a society of headline readers, so the goal is to give everyone time to pause and figure out what it says and use that learning for when reading any headline from any news source."
Only 39% of Americans in the U.S. recently said they were "very confident" they could recognize fake news, according to The Pew Research Center. And nearly one-third of tweens and teens said they have forwarded an online news story in the last six months that they later found out was fake, according to Common Sense Media.
For the new font, or "typeside," JWT handcrafted and rotated letters 90 degrees. Mr. Padin said the process took about a month and a half because the agency wanted to make sure it's a working typeface.