Letters

Letters. The Only Audio Visual Language

‘From Parietal to Stæfræw, Visual Communication through Components and Radicals ‘ By Toby Tinsley
Release date: 2026.

Letters. Combine a few of them in the right order and you create words. Multiple words create sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. All knowledge, information and imagination recorded by the simple, humble letter.

But the word “letter” is just a name we have put to a shape. This shape made from components and radicals also comes with a nominated sound, to which we have also given it.

The fact is, we are not actually reading letters and words and sentences at all.

We are looking at a series of shapes, when combined in such a way allows us to put pictures and images in our minds. So these shapes could be defined as pictures when they are joined together to create what we call words. The word effectively a collection of shapes to create one picture.

By this definition, this thesis explores the theory that we actually visually communicate entirely pictographically.

Even by the time you finish reading this small synopsis, your brain has processed over 1600 shapes creating approx 240 pictures which you fully understand the meaning of without actually ‘reading’ anything at all. Afterall, reading is just another name we have given to the process of looking at simple yet highly evolved logographs.

Every letter is a piece of art in its own right, words are the paintings, sentences become the narrative and books are our galleries so we can fill our imagination, fuel our knowledge and record our histories.


The simple, humble letter. The third form of all human communication.

Our alphabet paints pictures without a brush nor camera.

Letters have form, beauty and most importantly, meaning. Denoted by visual and audio recognition.

Every letter is a form of Art