Adam YEO: Bété Typeface — PREORDER

PREORDERS SHIP IN JUNE June 2026, English, Bété, 5 x 8 in., 28 pages, riso, softcover, staple-bound Edition of 200 Design: Adam Yeo & Sming Sming Books Printing: Irrelevant Press Of the 7000+ human languages in the world, between 50–100 are supported digitally, with 10 languages making up 82% of all internet content. This booklet is part of series that highlights the work of designers who are creating digital typefaces for languages or writing systems that are underrepresented or entirely unsupported within current operating systems, keyboards, and digital technologies at large. The process for developing such typefaces requires intensive research, often with ongoing community collaboration and feedback. By providing a digital application for these languages, the type designers featured in this series contribute to the longevity of a language, and in turn, its cultural knowledges, oral histories, and ways of thinking. Adam Yeo's Bété Typeface emerges from a deep engagement with the Bété script, a syllabary of 448 pictographic signs invented in 1956 by the Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré to transcribe the Bété language of Côte d’Ivoire. Based on geometric forms inspired by everyday life, this handwritten system was conceived to preserve and promote local culture. More than a tool for writing, the script embodies a worldview, a rhythm, and a visual logic deeply rooted in Bété traditions. This project is made in partnership with SILICON (the Stanford Initiative on Language Inclusion and Conservation in Old and New Media). Adam Yeo is a graphic designer, type design researcher, and faculty member at the University of Bondoukou in Côte d’Ivoire. He holds a PhD from Nanjing University of the Arts in China, where his research focused on African writing systems and typeface design. His work explores the relationship between writing systems, visual culture, and contemporary design. In particular, he researches the Bété script: an unencoded writing system from Côte d’Ivoire, with the aim of supporting its preservation and digital development. Through his projects, Adam brings together culture, identity, and design, transforming indigenous scripts and symbols into contemporary typographic and visual forms. His practice operates at the intersection of research, graphic design, and cultural heritage. Stanford Initiative on Language Inclusion and Conservation in Old and New Media (SILICON) believes that your “home screen” should feel like home. SILICON is a Stanford Presidential initiative, supported by UNESCO, that focuses on advancing digital inclusion and empowerment for the more than 6000 languages left behind in the Digital Age. SILICON works with communities, linguists, technologists, and more to develop the foundational building blocks of the digital age, including typefaces, keyboards, and UX/UI datasets.