The Dead Letter Archive

Typography, Branding | graduate thesis project

The Dead Letter Archive is a speculative, time-agnostic archive of asemic and imagined writing systems. It catalogs, preserves and exhibits scripts that cannot be read, making no effort to decipher or translate them.

The Dead Letter Archive is a speculative archive of asemic and imagined writing systems. It catalogues, preserves, and exhibits scripts that cannot be read, making no effort to decipher or translate them.

As part of my thesis at MICA, I designed three original asemic scripts, one each from the past, present, and future, built around a specific world and context, letting the writing system emerge naturally from it. Spanning visual identity system, typography, and exhibition design, the project explores what makes a writing system feel real.

The Dead Letter Archive

Typography, Branding | graduate thesis project

STA 100 Winner

Dead Letter Archive is a speculative archive of asemic and imagined writing systems. It catalogues, preserves, and exhibits scripts that cannot be read, making no effort to decipher or translate them.

Thalassan

A living script usedby an isolated island community with no recorded contact with the outside world. Fluid and wave- derived, the script continues to evolve with the community.

Velloric

A Bronze Age city script, likely used for administration and territorial record. 32 clay inscriptions were excavated in 1979, in South Anatolia (Modern day Turkey). The script has geometric, enclosed forms impressed into clay with a stylus.

Helix

A modular script developed on Ares, the first colony on Mars. Built from pixel-grid primitives designed for both digital displays and physical surfaces. Each character straddles a baseline — meaning carried in the distribution of form above and below the line.