The Cookie Monster Alphabet
In case you or someone you know needs a little levity or pick-me-up today, might I suggest what might be the cutest thing that’s ever aired on television: a little girl named Joey and Kermit the Frog saying the alphabet.
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kottke.org posts about alphabet
Design Notes on the Alphabet
From XKCD, some notes on the design of the alphabet. I actually hadn’t noticed the spacing of the vowels before.
See also The Evolution of the Alphabet.
Alphabet Truck
Over a period of four years and after thousands of miles of driving, Eric Tabuchi photographed the backs of semi-trailers with letters of the alphabet on them, eventually compiling all 26 letters. Here’s the first dozen:
(via present & correct)
An Abecedarium of International Postage Stamps
For last year’s 36 Days of Type challenge, artist and type designer Marie Boulanger selected 26 postage stamps from around the world with letters on them (C for Cuba, F for France, K for Kenya, etc.) and 10 stamps with the numerals 0-9 on them. What an amazing array of designs and lettering styles. I’ve included a few of my favorites above — you can see the rest on her Instagram or collected here in miniature.
An Alternate ABC Song that Slows Down the Tricky LMNOP Bit
An alternate version of the ABC song that slows down the LMNOP part is currently going viral because of a tweet by Noah Garfinkel: “They changed the ABC song to clarify the LMNOP part, and it is life ruining.”
I tracked down the original video from 2012:
The alternate arrangement is by Matt Richelson, who runs a popular YouTube channel and several websites dedicated to offering free materials (songs, lesson plans, etc.) to help kids learn English. Here’s what Richelson says about his version of the ABC song:
About the slow l,m,n,o,p: I teach young learners of English as a foreign language, and have found this way the most effective for teaching the letters.
I love the ellemmennohpee bit as much as anyone, but his reasoning is solid.
Stone Alphabets
This is one of several alphabets assembled by Belgian type designer Clotilde Olyff from stones collected at the beach.
Here are a few more examples, some of which were featured in this book called 3D Typography:
Well, I guess I have a new beachcombing activity for when I get tired of skipping rocks.
Kinetic Alphabet
From London motion design studio Mr. Kaplin, an animated alphabet where the animation for each letter is a experiment that was completed in a single day.
See also The ABCs in Motion.
The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets
The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets is a collection of “indigenous and minority writing systems”, gathered together in the hopes of collecting information about reviving interest in these alphabets. From the about page:
In 2009, when I started work on the first series of carvings that became the Endangered Alphabets Project, times were dark for indigenous and minority cultures. The lightning spread of television and the Internet were driving a kind of cultural imperialism into every corner of the world. Everyone had a screen or wanted a screen, and the English language and the Latin alphabet (or one of the half-dozen other major writing systems) were on every screen and every keyboard. Every other culture was left with a bleak choice: learn the mainstream script or type a series of meaningless tofu squares.
Yet 2019 is a remarkable time in the history of writing systems. In spite of creeping globalization, political oppression, and economic inequalities, minority cultures are starting to revive interest in their traditional scripts. Across the world, calligraphy is turning writing into art; letters are turning up as earrings, words as pendants, proverbs as clothing designs. Individuals, groups, organizations and even governments are showing interest in preserving and protecting traditional writing systems or even creating new ones as way to take back their cultural identity.
You can access the alphabets from a map on the front page or alphabetically here. The project is also looking for information on a number of possible scripts that may or not be still in use.
The image above is an example of the Yi alphabet, a script created during the Tang dynasty in China (618-907 AD).
The Evolution of the Alphabet
From Matt Baker of UsefulCharts, this chart traces the evolution of our familiar alphabet from its Proto-Sinaitic roots circa 1850-1550 BC. It’s tough to see how the pictographic forms of the original script evolved into our letters; aside from the T and maybe M & O, there’s little resemblance. Prints are available. (via the morning news)
Update: Baker recently did an updated version of the alphabet evolution chart.
The ABCs in Motion
For this year’s 36 Days of Type project, Ben Huynh submitted this 3D animation of the alphabet from A to Z. You can see animations of the individual letters on Huynh’s Instagram. (via colossal)
A Pinterest board full of letterforms
Curated by Zach Davenport, this Pinterest board features all sorts of different letterforms, from A to Z.
The A-to-Z of dance
Super-cool video from i-D of dance styles for each letter of the alphabet.
(via @Han)
The last name effect
People whose surnames begin with the first few letters of the alphabet (A-I) seem to react differently to certain situations than those whose surnames begin with the letters at the end of the alphabet (R-Z). Slate reports.
E-mails were sent out to adults offering them $500 to participate in a survey. Average response time was between six and seven hours. The same negative correlation between response time and alphabetic rank was observed, but only when the researchers looked at the names the respondents were born with. When Carlson and Conard looked at married names or names changed for some other reason, the correlation dwindled to insignificance. This, they conclude, demonstrates that the “last name effect” derives from “a childhood response tendency.” Only people who grew up with a name at the back of the alphabet demonstrated truly Pavlovian responses to the $500 offer.
See also the birth-month soccer anomaly.
A B Sea
That’s from a lovely poster that James Mattison made for his daughter.
The theme and title of the piece was ‘Learn your A-B-Sea’ and took the format of an alphabet chart illustrated with fish and sea creatures that could be found in the local stretch of water, the Arabian Gulf.
(via @h_fj)
Star Wars A to Z
A set of nicely illustrated Star Wars ABC cards. A is for Ackbar, S is for Sarlacc, etc.
If you need to read any literature
If you need to read any literature from Krypton (Superman’s home planet), here’s the 118 letter alphabet you’ll need to know.
The politically incorrect alphabet. A is for
The politically incorrect alphabet. A is for abortion, B is for bomb, C is for cigarettes…
“Why do the letters of the alphabet
“Why do the letters of the alphabet occur in the particular order that they do?”
Design critique of the alphabet
Design critique of the alphabet. “Puhleez! The capital I without the crossbars top and bottom is either the laziest piece of design in history, or an elegant stroke of modernism. With the crossbars it’s just clunky, boring and awkward. The lowercase i is kind of cute with that little dot, I suppose, but I’m not really buying it. This one should have never made it out of the comp stage.”
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