Can you read the signs?

November 30, 2007 8:43 PM

What non-letter character sets would translate well into tattoos?

I'm getting my first general-public visual tattoos soon (I have one already, on my hip). I'm getting two anklets- each of a different saying that is important to me, or helps me get through the day. I want to have a reminder of these things everywhere I go.

Problem is, I think it's incredibly easy for text in tattoos to end up looking tacky. I've been entertaining the idea of either getting the tattoo in Morse or Braille- I'll know what it means, and it'll always be there, but the general public doesn't have to know. What other "languages" do you all think would translate well into a tattoo? Bonus points for the very simple, with non-intricate characters- height-wise, thsi tattoo will be rather small.

posted by Glitter Ninja to Writing & Language (30 answers total)

Ogham, shorthand, graffitti or choose your own.
posted by scalefree at 8:53 PM on November 30, 2007

ASCII to binary. Any two shapes could represent ones and zeros.

01101011
01101001
01110100
01110100
01100101
01101110
01110011

posted by D.C. at 8:56 PM on November 30, 2007

Response by poster: I contemplated binary, but space wise, it's a little too much to squeeze in. Okay, a lot too much. Thanks for the shorthand suggestion- I'm looking into it.

These are all great suggestions. Keep them coming. :D
posted by Glitter Ninja at 9:05 PM on November 30, 2007

IPA?
posted by c0nsumer at 9:06 PM on November 30, 2007

I know you said you want the message to be something you know but others don't, but I think there's a certain appeal to being able to say "nobody in the world knows what it means".
posted by scalefree at 9:12 PM on November 30, 2007 [2 favorites]

Not Chinese or Japanese, that's for sure.
posted by pravit at 9:16 PM on November 30, 2007

Elian - a tutorial
posted by unixrat at 9:20 PM on November 30, 2007

What about ASCII to octal? You could represent each digit with 8 different height bars or 8 different colors.
posted by pombe at 9:34 PM on November 30, 2007

One of Tolkien's Elvish Languages.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 9:36 PM on November 30, 2007

Not so many people know cuneiform!

Or you could use semaphore or nautical flags

I guess you don't want to say "it's from a moive" but Disney's Atlantean is kind of cool looking. Tolkein also wrote a bunch of languages if you don't mind being nerdy.
posted by aubilenon at 9:41 PM on November 30, 2007

I Ching
posted by scalefree at 9:45 PM on November 30, 2007

how about the Tenctonese alphabets from the series Alien Nation? It might make a killer arm band.
posted by slavlin at 10:04 PM on November 30, 2007 [2 favorites]

You should use the secret language my best friend and I created in middle school: Listrellapaz! E-mail me, I'll send it to you. Yes- I still remember it. And: It's super cool.
posted by thebrokenmuse at 10:17 PM on November 30, 2007

SignWriting?
posted by RichardP at 10:20 PM on November 30, 2007

Nuosu
posted by Abiezer at 10:24 PM on November 30, 2007

Mayan Glyphs
posted by Stewriffic at 10:30 PM on November 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Code 128-B Barcode.
posted by IvyMike at 10:33 PM on November 30, 2007

I'm doing the same thing: want to put a quote on me but don't like the look of text either, so I'm doing a rebus.
posted by sfkiddo at 10:34 PM on November 30, 2007

Typographic ornaments? It's a literal character set, though certainly not linguistic. If you're interested, I'd recommend the set from Hoefler Text.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 10:55 PM on November 30, 2007

Oh, and stuff written in Icelandic or Faroese always looks nice, I think.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 11:01 PM on November 30, 2007

How about hex? Much more information per character than binary, although still half of normal alphanumeric codes.
posted by cftarnas at 11:27 PM on November 30, 2007

Runic tattoes? Also, card suits, and unicode symbols.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:50 AM on December 1, 2007

Wingdings!
posted by ignignokt at 2:09 AM on December 1, 2007 [3 favorites]

Did you see klangklangston's fantastic post on the blue about the Calligraphy of Mouneer Al-Shaarani?

Quite a few good choices here.
posted by dantodd at 2:43 AM on December 1, 2007

Hobo cypher!
posted by zerobyproxy at 7:01 AM on December 1, 2007

seconding Tengwar, the character-set devised by Tolkien as the elvish written language in his novels.

(When I decide to share it) I frequently get compliments on my tattoo comprised mainly of Tengwar.
posted by namewithoutwords at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2007

Bengali is beautiful
posted by tiburon at 10:52 AM on December 1, 2007

Seconding Mayan glyphs. You can squeeze in a lot of information into a small area. I really wish I still had my notes from my Mayan Culture class so I could explain this better, but there's a way to express your birth date in terms of where it would be on the Mayan calendar, then write it in a glyph. Very unique.
posted by dondiego87 at 1:38 PM on December 1, 2007

Oy, I am strongly of the opinion that it's at best vapid and at worst disrespectful to get a tattoo in a language you don't understand and/or has no personal significance to you. Why not use the visual lexicon -- since you already have two verbal tattoos it could be a nice change.
posted by loiseau at 4:13 PM on December 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Logos - it's neat, plus it's non-ethnically-tied so you don't have to feel weird about it. (Disclaimer I have at least three video game/fantasy novel tattoos, so I see nothing wrong with it.)
posted by restless_nomad at 10:28 AM on December 3, 2007