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Re: I need an artist ::: and articles

From:David G. Durand <dgd@...>
Date:Monday, January 18, 1999, 22:35
At 12:36 PM -0500 1/18/99, Rhialto wrote:
>I need an artist to help me design an alphabet, as all I know about art >packages can comfortably fit on the tip of a pin.
I'd like to echo Taliesin's comments, but vary them a bit. I find designing scripts to be one of the real joys of conlanging -- in fact, I tend to have more scripts on tap than conlangs, at any given time. I could volunteer some ideas, but I think you'll find that you will really have to think about the graphic impression you want to make, and the culture you have in mind before you can create a satisfactory script. The one thing I'd change is Taliesin's advice to use a pencil. I find that I get a lot of ideas by choosing a particular writing implement (something unusual) and then exporing that shapes that that implement _wants_ to make, and then evolve a system based on that. Currently, I've been working with "brush pens", which have a great stroke, and a lot of possible variation and control. I even find that using a very neutral instrument like a fine-line felt-tip pen can lead to an interesting style: either intentionally simple, like a sans-serif font, or compensatorially ornate, with fourishes and curliques, in defiance of the uninflected line. Once you get some basic shapes, combine them in different ways, and the write your letters over and over until they "jell" into comfortable shapes. You may want to develop a "script" version with continuous joined letters. There are also options like syllabaries, or Indic style scripts, where consonants are full letters, and vowels are diacritic-like modifications of them. Indic scripts typically combine consonants into ligatured forms when a consonant cluster is to be represented. I'd recommend developing your own script, as it's so much fun. You could start (as many of us did) by making an assignment of your phonology to Tolkien's Tengwar -- Computer fonts are readily available, and it was designed to be targetable to many phonologies. I don't personally agree with the opinion that it's not visually distinctive enought to be a possible real script. (That's an old Conlang argument/topic). The hardest thing (if you want to have it) is to introduce irregularities and imperfections into your writing system -- I always end up with very phonemic systems, perhaps because I always understand the phonology pretty well when I develop the script. trying to invent something as interesting as English (or even French) spelling is hard. Burmese is one of my favorite scripts, and is also a marvellously weird and unintuitive writing system. Tamil is also exceptionally beautiful, as is Arabic (most Arabic typesetting is visually inferior to grisly, it demands to be written by a sensitive and skilled calligrapher). There are good books to read: Writing Systems of the World?, from Oxford University Press, is a marvel, but expensive -- a University library may well have it. The next best is Hans Jensen (I think, but search by title, not author, to be sure), "Sign, Symbol, and Script" Joanna Drucker wrote an amusing book on the history of the alphabet ("The alphabetic Labyrinth" (?)), which, while not completely accurate as a history, has many well-chosen plates and examples. She's a medium-famous current graphic designer, among those who follow such things. The Unicode Book has a lot of examples, but doesn't give much information on how the scripts actually function. So it won't help you evolve the writing system, as much as perhaps give you graphical ideas. And of course there are many books on Mayan writing, a cool, but difficult, logo-syllabic script (a syllabary with some signs that represent whole words). I can't think of a favorite to recommend. For Egyptian Hieroglyphics, "Hieroglyphics Without Tears", from University of Texas Press is definitely the best. Reasonably painless, and quite clear, and gives a lot of information in a short space. Con-hieroglyphics are rare, however, due to the large size of the symbol sets, and the relatively high artistic demands of drawing many recognizable pictures. -- David _________________________________________ David Durand dgd@cs.bu.edu \ david@dynamicDiagrams.com Boston University Computer Science \ Sr. Analyst http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/ \ Dynamic Diagrams --------------------------------------------\ http://www.dynamicDiagrams.com/ MAPA: mapping for the WWW \__________________________