What is Fingeralphabet.org?
Fingeralphabet.org is a private pro bono project aiming to provide free illustrations for sign language alphabets to be used for non commercial purposes.
Who is Lassal?
I am a professional artist who, amongst other things, develops concept design for international agencies and coorporations. These companies are able to pay what is necessary in order to obtain something valuable for themselves and their respective clients.
But I am aware of the fact that not everything that is useful is cheaply obtainable or finds someone willing and able to pay for it. Let alone someone who pays and shares with others.
I therefore decided to adopt this topic, that goes so well with my job description, and to dedicate part of my free time to provide illustrations for free basic manual alphabets. My point here is to work specifically to help private people and non-profit organisations that normally would not be able to afford these services.
The Purpose
The aim of Fingeralphabet.org is to provide high quality manual alphabets – from as many countries as possible, as correctly as possible, for as many people as possible.
These images currently come as ready to print PDFs and are licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.
The Means
The images on this page are from the corresponding eBook manuals published by LegendaryMedia‘s new imprint Main Walk Books.
The manuals are an expanded version of the free PDFs and also include some background information, the handsigns from two vantage points and the signs for the numbers 0-10. The eBooks are made to fulfil further demand for documentation, and are kept at a very low price. The corresponding print books are only possible as print on demand (too many books and too small a target group), which increases the price significantly. There is no way around this at present.The (small) income generated by the Fingeralphabet manuals helps finance the overall project. In fact all the books sold via LegendaryMedia are helping to finance Fingeralphabet.org.
Fingeralphabet KIDS
Fingeralphabet KIDS is a richly illustrated publication made specifically for children. The ebooks and print versions will all be published by LegendaryMedia‘s new imprint Main Walk Books – the revenue will also help to finace the main project.
The Beginnings
It was one postcard design that actually initiated the fingeralphabet project. The idea of having a website for free downloads, evolved from the cheerful reception the postcard got from colleagues, family, friends and those who got to see it in advance. More precisely the idea evolved from what I saw and heard from the local deaf community, where I had the illustrations revised.
The postcard per se was rather basic – simply due to time constraints.
The postcard’s first appearance was at the Frankfurt Bookfair in October 2006, where it was distributed for free.
The Future
After analyzing the feedback from the first version of this website, I decided I had to make things much more complex for me if I wanted to have it easy for others. So to do this project right and to really reach as many people as possible, a number of things had to change:
- every country needs to be addressed individually
- easy navigation and visual explanations
- people need examples of what can be done with the material to get inspired
- not individual signs, but finished layouts (private people are generally not equipped to do their own graphic design)
Obviously I am not quite there yet. Not by far. But I am working on it. One step at a time.
My dream is to fill up this information hole once and for all and to provide as much as is needed for basic worldwide education and communication. The only drawback being that you will need to go online to get it.
There is even a possibility to aquire the rights for commercial purposes – the money will help to finance the site and the research, which amounts to considerable costs.
Apart from that …
… if you have anything to comment concerning the sign language alphabets or further reference material, please do not hesitate to contact me! I will try to read and answer all the messages I get, even though it might take a while here and there.
Most of the material you see around in the internet is not for free reproduction and quite a lot of it is relatively near to impossible to decipher (if it is correct at all). I am therefore always looking for further ressources and reference materials. If you happen to have or know of additional material I could rely upon, I would be glad if you could pass me the information along via eMail. There will be no copyright infringement from my part, as I am merely using 3rd party material as a reference for my very own illustrations.
