Johannes Bergerhausen & Thomas Huot-Marchand
Introduction to the exhibition, project & symposium
In roughly 5,000 years, mankind has created 290 writing systems like Latin, Greek, Arabic or Chinese. As of today, we can use 150 of them on our computers and smart phones. But at the same time this means that 140 scripts are still missing on our computers. These are the obscure, the historical and the so-called ‘Minority Scripts’.
The Missing Scripts Project is a long-term initiative to focus on research and type-design for these lesser known writing systems. Johannes and Thomas present the key approaches of the international research and design project and show why it is important to even get historical scripts on the computer.
Missing Scripts, started in 2016, is a joint effort of Hochschule Mainz, Germany, ANRT Nancy, France und SEI Berkeley, USA.