Pascal Glissmann 45 Symbols
Visual Language as Cultural Record
Is This Typography? Undeciphered Writing, Global Screens, and the Edges of the Field
What defines a script—and what visual language can become in a world in flux.
Inspired by the undeciphered writing system of the Disc of Phaistos, the 45 Symbols Project cultivates methods for translating research—from personal narratives to planetary challenges—into systems of visual language. What began as a simultaneous typography seminar in six design schools worldwide has, over the past decade, evolved into an open, accessible platform driven by free calls for participation. Here, typography and visual language operate not only as tools of communication, but as investigative instruments for reading, indexing, and reconfiguring cultural evidence.
The talk will briefly present undeciphered writing systems from the past, asking what constitutes a script and where the boundaries of typographic systems are drawn. Through case studies from 45 Symbols—ranging from speculative alphabets to planetary diagrams—the presentation will explore how visual language can index lived experience and archive emerging cultural imaginaries. Each project generates forty-five visual elements, translated into functional fonts—not for editorial use, but as a discipline-specific form of archiving voices from around the world. Collectively, these works form a repository of visual responses to pressing research inquiries—an archive that looks like a font book, but reads more like a cultural diary.
For students in typography—and related fields—the 45 Symbols project has a twofold impact: it encourages them to ground design in lived experience, and it trains them to think in visual grammars and coherent vocabularies when moving on to typeface design or any project within the discipline. While visual language and typography are not identical, in design education the act of creating a unique system of visual elements—built on rules and grammar—shapes how future typographic systems are imagined. Is this typography? In a way—yes, and in another way, it’s typography learning how to see itself sideways.”