Of all kinds, always and forever. But these days I’m enraptured by neography in particular, that is: synthetic systems of writing. You could say all forms of writing are synthetic since all were created but I am more interested in constructed scripts which are associated with fictional language. Here’s a script designed by rylasorta on reddit:
This is a format I created called “Nettescript”, each ‘branch’ of flowery letters is a word. You start at the root (in this case, at the top), and follow the vine, reading objects in the order they appear on the vine. If they shoot off on a branch, you follow the branch.
The labyrinthine nature of Nettescript reminds me of another form of graphic communication which I’ve never seen identified as neography but I think should certainly count as such. As you’ve probably inferred, neography is a wonderful tool for secret messaging. It’s becoming widely known that during the trans-atlantic slave trade, cornrows were often braided to illustrate plantation escape routes. What I didn’t know is that certain braid patterns translated to whole words such as “depart’. Like many minority writing systems, the neographical tradition of cornrows is endangered, and so photo examples are hard to come by. Nonetheless, I’d love to dig further and find what other braid patterns can be translated to words! I’ll update you on my treasure hunt here.
Final thought: As privacy becomes obsolete and surveillance prevails, a strong cultural resurgence of neography would be brilliant. After all, we are dawning on an astrological age which is governed by air (the element associated with communication, connection, and ideas). And more specifically, this era centers on the themes of Aquarius (rebellion, innovation, detachment).
spice core 
Leave a comment