RMIT University create ultimate study hack for year 12 students with ‘Sans Forgetica’ via Naked

At a time of the year when universities are fighting for the attention of year 12 students who are weighing up their higher education options, Naked, a strategy and creative agency, has worked with RMIT University to develop a campaign with a world-first innovation.

Working with researchers and academics from RMIT’s School of Design and Behavioural Business Lab, Naked has created a new font specifically designed and tested to help students remember typed study notes. It’s called Sans Forgetica.

Says Jon Burden, ECD, Naked: “Year 12 students studying for exams have a lot on their plate, so we wanted to find a way to be useful and give them something to actually help their study. We investigated ways to aid memory and uncovered previous research which gave us our starting point. From there we were able to work with the brilliant people within RMIT to develop, refine and test what became Sans Forgetica. It’s a lovely blend of art meeting science; of theory meeting practice. I only wish it was around when I was at school!”

The font was developed using a learning principle called ‘desirable difficulty’, where an obstruction is added to the learning process to promote deeper cognitive processing which results in better memory retention. During development several fonts were tested with 400 students in laboratory and online experiments, and the font that became Sans Forgetica demonstrated that it most effectively helped people retain information.

Says Lynda Cavalera, associate director – brand, segments and campaigns, RMIT University: “This project allows us to bring RMIT to life in a vivid and tangible way. We’ve created a genuinely unique tool that any student can use to help them with their studies, and we’ve done it by bringing together people within the university to put theory into practice. We believe that Sans Forgetica can have a range of applications, but for now, we hope that year 12 students and current RMIT students find it useful while studying for their exams.”

The launch of the font is being supported with activity in social channels and an outreach program to schools in Victoria. Naked worked with sister Enero agency Orchard as technology partner for the project.

Sans Forgetica is available free for download as a font or as a Chrome browser extension. Watch the films and download the font at sansforgetica.rmit.

RMIT University

Music – Anton@TrailerMedia