Interior Design magazine reports on a contest to create the "undiscovered" 27th letter for the English alphabet. But before you start spending your prize money (of which there apparently is none, anyway; participants get free notebooks in which to record their ideas), read the rules:
Sponsored by the Art Directors Club and Moleskine, the competition is open exclusively to the Young Guns, a group of the visual communication club's members under the age of 30. The deadline for the contest is March 3. Finalists will be announced April 1, just as the club begins accepting entries for the sixth Young Guns class.
Participants can create the letter through any media, from type design and websites to video and photography. The results will be evaluated by a jury that will select 27 finalists to feature in a virtual exhibition on the ADC website, and in a limited edition Moleskin publication which will be available for sale to benefit Lettera 27, a non-profit literacy advocate.
I hereby make this an open-source contest. If you'd like to nominate a new letter, leave a comment. I'll forward all the submissions to the Art Directors Club.
Hat tip to reader Marjanne Pearson, who didn't want a link but who commented, "I always thought the 27th letter was the ampersand." So did I.
Pictured: Eth (also spelled edh), a letter in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet and in modern Icelandic, where it represents a voiced dental fricative like the th sound in them.
In my experience over many years of dealing with graphic designers, poor spelling -- even illiteracy -- seems to be part of their job description. Their urge to simplify often leads to them omitting capitals and punctuation because, "...it looks tidier". So why then do they need yet another letter to add to their confusion?
Furthermore, I wonder what's the sound of this new letter and what purpose it serves: surely that should be the starting point? Not just what it looks like on paper.
As you can see this one really gets up my nose!
Posted by: John Russell | February 26, 2008 at 05:51 AM
I nominate wynn FTÇ·!
Posted by: goofy | February 26, 2008 at 07:00 AM