For parents all over the world, reading with your child is a universal joy that builds family bonds, lasting memories and essential language skills. Confident young readers have easy access to the world of knowledge around them.

The alphabet is the basic building block for language, literacy and lifelong learning.  With our 2013 Alphabet Bike design, Wishbone Design Studio applauds families who read together and those who work for global literacy, in an age where information is king.

This year’s design was created by Auckland-based design team Ryan Henderson and Alicia Christie, aka degreedesign.co.nz. Applying a modern twist on primary colours, a generous window to the wooden canvas, and a simple typography, Ryan & Alicia’s Alphabet Bike packages the roman alphabet in absolute style.

But more than just great design, Alphabet Bike is also the flagship for Wishbone’s Read With Me project.

read with me project

Make sure you don’t miss the launch
of Read With Me in March 2013.

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from the artists – ryan henderson & alicia christie

When Wishbone asked if we’d like to design the bike for this year’s Limited Edition literacy theme, we were excited. We’re parents of young children ourselves, so we see first-hand that literacy is so fundamental to their future. It’s important to get children interested in reading from an early age. We’ve seen our oldest child gain so much confidence from grasping reading and learning to write. Reading to her has been a longstanding daily ritual for us – something we all get pleasure from. She enjoys discovering the new worlds contained in books and we enjoy revisiting some of our childhood favorites just as much.

Being the graphic designers for Wishbone we’ve done a lot of fun projects with them, but we’ve been keen to collaborate on a design for a Limited Edition bike for a while. This was the ideal project and right up our alley as playing with type and colour is something we love to do. Using bold typography and a strong colour palette we wanted to create a design that had impact and would hopefully appeal to boys & girls everywhere.

Here’s to many more years of reading & riding!

Ryan and Alicia.

Literacy is a human right

Learning to read is a powerful tool and a basic human right. But over 700 million adults globally are illiterate – that’s one in five. In today’s information age, it’s a devastating statistic.

Our hope is that everyone who reads will take action to help others develop literacy skills to tackle life’s challenges.  At Wishbone, we’ve created our Read With Me project to help make a difference.

Save The Children’s Literacy Boost programme supports children’s effort to read and write by establishing mini-libraries of 200-250 books  – giving children the basic resources required to begin a learn-to-read programme.  Read more about Save The Children and the Literacy Boost programme here.

United Nations Literacy Decade 2002 – 2012

The goal of the UN Literacy Decade was to champion universal literacy as a step towards freedom for all.

In 1999, 106 million school-age children did not attend school. By Jan 2012 that number had dropped to 69 million. A huge achievement, and very quick work. But the UN Millenium Development Goal is to have all children in school by 2015.

That may sound tough, but the greater challenge is to ensure that school systems work for every single kid who makes it through the door. Lack of books, paper, pencils, even furniture – absent teachers and inadequate space. There are countless issues to address.

One thing we know for sure, is that family and community involvement from the beginning gives a child the best possible chance of success.  We need to create a culture of reading, talking and story-telling inside and outside the classroom.