I first shared the idea of a minimalist writing system made entirely of dots and lines, written vertically. After several iterations and feedback from the community, I've completed the first public version of it: Linera.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the design.
I used three scripts. The top one is a private polyglot version of a fully cursive script I posted before. The middle one is a script I came up with this morning, and the bottom one is a script I'm still developing.
I woke up and had this idea out of nowhere so I decided to see what it looks like.
The idea is to create a script that's built almost entirely from vertical lines. Characters are distinguished by line count, height, dot placement, and small breaks rather than unique shapes. The goal is to see whether such a minimalist writing system can still be readable.
I designed a Paper Flag Script where each letter is represented by a combination of colour and pattern. The current version uses five colours and five patterns to encode the alphabet.
You can use string and paper flags or simply do it on paper.
I'm considering whether to expand it with different flag shapes.
It's a script I have created and I'll be posting the key after a few days.
Hint- It's based upon the English alphabet.
A detective discovers this painting tucked inside the diary of a murdered foreign spy. Convinced it's more than just artwork, he believes it contains hidden messages.
Here's a description that fits the title and invites discussion:
I named it "Beanstalk Script", a writing system that disguises text as a climbing vine.
Unlike a simple decorative alphabet, the script uses the structure of a plant to organize information:
🌵 Vowels are woven into the stem.
🌱 Consonants grow as leaves, tendrils, buds, and branches.
🌵 Words/Sentences branch into related words, creating a hierarchical sentence structure.
🌳 From sentences to paragraphs can resemble a single Vine-like doodle.
The first image contains the encoded message:
"The organisation has decided to organise an event in which we will execute the plan."
The second image shows the alphabet key and the method.
People often point to accounts where widows supposedly "Complained or threatened to curse" if their relatives didn't perform sati as proof that the practice was voluntary. This comic is a satire of that reasoning. A widow insisting on dying does not answer the more important question: why did she believe death was her best or only option? Imagine her state of mind—overwhelming grief, fear of an uncertain future, social stigma, economic insecurity, loss of identity, being treated as inauspicious, and religious beliefs promising honor in death while widowhood could mean a lifetime of isolation. Under such circumstances, apparent willingness alone does not establish free and meaningful consent. Yet some people reduce all of that to, "She wanted it," or even claim women forced sati upon themselves. This comic satirizes that argument by taking it to its logical extreme.
I designed it 5 years ago when I was 20 and my 18 year old girlfriend wanted to write my name on her palm using mehandi.
I designed this writing system around a simple idea: vowels form the stem, while consonants grow from it like leaves, flowers, vines, and tendrils, giving it look of a decorative plant-like doodle. The cipher works in steps- 1- It hides in the plain sight as a design or a doodle. 2- It uses modification in the stem as a wovel marker, writing on alternative sides and a lot of curves for design purposes. It is going to take a lot of time for someone to figure out which curves are meaningful and which are not, direction of reading and which parts to treat as letters and the direction of writing.
Instead of writing letters one after another, you first draw the vine containing the vowels, then decorate it with consonant symbols to complete the word.
The system is intended primarily as a decorative cipher rather than a practical everyday script. My goal was to create writing that resembles living plant growth while remaining systematic and readable once you know the key.
Had this idea for a long time. I had even created some variation. Today I completed it.
Do you like to use multiple conscripts or single conscript for your private (secret) notes and why?
I designed this as a punctuation mark for a writing system I'm developing. I'm deliberately not saying what it's supposed to mean because I want unbiased first impressions.
What does it evoke for you?
What function would you guess it has?
What emotion or concept does it communicate?
Does it feel like a question, exclamation, pause, uncertainty, curiosity, or something else?
Or even nothing.
A script completely cursive- letters, words, sentences, punctuations everything connected together into a single thread of unity.
Here I'm uploading a new version of the first calligraphy I uploaded in my Conlang - Myormana. I've included the breaking down of characters in the word with its meaning. The script - It's a flowing shape based writing system in which different combinations of shapes that emerge as loops of the same line making different sounds. I've used the Latin alphabet to explain the sounds used in this word. I'll upload the script and how it works in another post.
It's just a fun animation, nothing serious.
This is a word that means Bird from my conlang- Myorma.
The script Myormana is designed to be very flexible. Myormana isn't a set of symbols for an alphabet but rather some distinct shapes that you have to arrange in specific order to represent a sound.