What the Vai Script Reveals About the Evolution of Writing - SAPIENS
How a writing system went from being a dream (literally) to a reality, codified in unicode.
Language and the Invention of Writing | Talking Points Memo
Language is not an invention. As best we can tell it is an evolved feature of the human brain. There have been almost countless languages humans have spoken. But they all follow certain rules that grow out of the wiring of the human brain and human cognition. Critically, it is something that is hardwired into us. Writing is an altogether different and artificial thing.
Related links
Google Noto Fonts
Google’s Noto (short for no-tofu; tofu being the rectangle of unicode sadness) is certainly ambitious. It has glyphs from pretty much every known alphabet …including Ogham and Linear B!
The origins of abc | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog
A wonderful history of our alphabet. Set aside some time to read this.
The World’s Writing Systems
What a lovely timeline of civilisation. This site makes for a nice companion piece to that database of dimensioned drawings—they’re both delightful to explore.