Fjerdan Writing System

Christian Thalmann

Hey,

while I was working on Netflix' Shadow & Bone a while ago, I designed a writing system in anticipation of the Six of Crows spin-off, which was supposed to play in Fjerda itself for large parts. Unfortunately, the spin-off was canceled. This is what it would have looked like!

Background: Fantasy world during its industrial revolution, technology is overtaking magic in importance, Fjerda is a warlike pseudo-Scandinavian nation of pious magic-haters (thaumophobes?).

Mark Simonson

Beautiful work! A shame the show was cancelled.

John Hudson

I really admire the work you did for Shadow & Bone.

You list of consonants is missing the sibilants.

Is
  
the only one?

Christian Thalmann

ARGH. I knew there had to be a mistake somewhere.

Yes, the glyph you cite is /s/, which is the only base sibillant, though it has a palatalized version (which is not missing from the palatalized series...). I'll try to fix it in as many social media as I can.

Joshua Langman

I don't watch much TV, but I stumbled upon Shadow and Bone recently and have been enjoying it. I specifically noticed that the scripts seemed to be unusually well thought-out and that they existed in various printed and handwritten forms for additional visual nuance. Congratulations on your excellent work.

Christian Thalmann

Joshua Langman said:

I don't watch much TV, but I stumbled upon Shadow and Bone recently and have been enjoying it. I specifically noticed that the scripts seemed to be unusually well thought-out and that they existed in various printed and handwritten forms for additional visual nuance. Congratulations on your excellent work.

Yeah, they really leaned into the scripts! For the record, though, David J. Peterson created most of the scripts on the show. I only got to do Shu (and Fjerdan) while David did Ravkan, Kerch, and Zemeni.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone!

EDIT: Fixed the omitted /s/.

Jongseong Park

I'm not familiar with the show at all, but this is beautiful and very well thought out, showing inspiration from features of real writing systems and their development. Bravo!

Kent Lew

Love seeing this work, Christian. Very inspiring.

(Also enjoyed the show. Disappointed about the cancellation. Need to read the books!)

Alanna Munro

Wow, this is beautiful! I really appreciate the idea to have the woodcarving, vernacular handwriting, etc. styles, that's so smart. It's a bummer when projects like this fall through but it's really great work! 

Peter Baker

Very sad about the Six of Crows spinoff. Not that I would have watched it, but these fantastic fonts deserve a life!