There are around ten thousand distinct syllables used in English words, making it challenging to create a syllabic writing system for the language. D16 Syllabics approaches this task with a variety of techniques: shape rotation inspired by Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, pictographic symbols inspired by Maya and Egyptian hieroglyphs, stacked syllable blocks and schematic phonetic symbols inspired by Hangul, and a few new ideas as well. The name derives from a mathematical object, the dihedral group of order 16, that describes the many ways a symbol can be oriented to alter its pronunciation. D16 does not attempt to be a minimal, optimized representation of English phonetics: some aspects of the system are optional and leave room for ambiguity, and one is free to write one syllable in multiple ways or even invent new symbols. The system is designed for richness and artistic expression, like the ancient writing systems that inspired it.

This has been a work in progress for several years, and I have not yet made a complete explanation or guide. However, this short video is a good overview of the basics:

In this excerpt from a talk I give more detail about my process and the rationale behind the design:

D16 was included in the juried exhibition Quasi: Experimental Writing Systems at ArtCenter College of Design. All the calligraphic examples on this page and in the videos are characters I made for this video, writing out Christopher Knowles’ words for the first few minutes of Einstein on the Beach.