Deseret Alphabet – A Motley Vision

Sunday Lit Crit Sermon: Brigham Young on Other Languages

0--BrighamYoung1 Our society today believes that proper education includes understanding your own tongue. What that understanding entails is sometimes debated, as is exactly what makes up “proper English.” Of course, Brigham had his own ideas about what was “proper” for English; while well intentioned the Deseret Alphabet didn’t really work out all that well. But he was also a strong proponent of learning in general, and learning language specifically.

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La Piedra Ente La Ã‘eve

La Piedra Ente La Ã‘eve I’ve had a bit of fun showing this book to friends at Church since it arrived a couple of weeks ago. I ask them to guess both the language the book is in, and the alphabet used in the last two lines of the title. So far, no one, not even those who speak Spanish or Portuguese, has been able to identify either.

Of course those who have purchased an AMV T-shirt know that the alphabet on the second set of lines in the title is the Deseret Alphabet, the 1860s-era attempt to make it easier for immigrants to learn English. While that misguided effort failed, the alphabet has recently seen a bit of a comeback, both because of its role in the development of unicode, and because of its hobbyist and design uses.

It was the hobbyist community that led me to this book.

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A Short History of Mormon Publishing: Commercial LDS Publishing Begins

The fourth of eight posts and an introduction. See also Part III, Part II, Part I, Introduction

The arrival of the transcontinental railroad to Utah in 1869 marked the end of a period of relative isolation for the LDS Church. It also came just at the end of a period of almost no Mormon publishing in Utah and the United States. Continue reading “A Short History of Mormon Publishing: Commercial LDS Publishing Begins”

New t-shirt: The coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to show you are LDS

View the LDS in Geek speak t-shirts in four different color combos (sizes/styles for men and women)

Direct links: white on blue | red on gray | green on black | black on white

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At long last, here is the second in the series of esoteric yet awesome Mormon-themed T-shirt designs that we’re creating to help support the hosting costs for AMV. I’m proud to announce:

LDS (lowercase) in Deseret Alphabet hexadecimal code

Bear with me here as I explain the utter coolness of this concept.

1. Take the letters LDS.

2. Transliterate them in to their Deseret Alphabet characters.

3. Represent those characters as their hexadecimal character in unicode and stack them top to bottom.

4. Choose the lowercase versions of the letters because those particular hex strings look cooler than the uppercase ones.

5. Use the awesome font Singularity by LDS designer, mobile UI guru and font enthusiast Jared Benson.

6. Create four killer color combos for the AMV Spreadshirt store: white on navy, black on white, AMV red* on grey and (my personal favorite) terminal green** on black. And offer both men’s and women’s versions, of course.

THE RESULT = the coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to sort-of show off your LDS-ness ever (and support AMV at the same time). Convinced or just want to take a look? Click through to the AMV Spreadshirt Store. A few more details after the jump. Continue reading “New t-shirt: The coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to show you are LDS”

A report on AMV t-shirts and Support AMV

My awesome parents sent me one of the AMV in Deseret Alphabet t-shirts for Christmas. I had asked for it, of course. But that did not diminish the excitement of opening the gift.

My first impressions:

1. The white on black looks really cool. And the size of the lettering is perfect.

2. The weight of the t-shirt is quite good and I wouldn’t go with a lighter weight t-shirt (at least not for white on black).

3. The printing job is also quality. It’s a bit hard to tell from the photo, but the lines are crisp. I don’t know that the plot printing technique is amazingly better out of the gate, but

Photo after the jump as well as an update on Support AMV.

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Announcing: Support AMV (killer t-shirts and more)

A Motley Vision will turn five this June 2009. Since AMV moved to its own domain in June 2006, I (by the way, this is William in admin mode) have paid for the hosting costs to the tune of $70 a year*. Not outrageous, but I’d like to distribute the costs if I can. Even more: I’d like to do it in ways that are fun and cool and experiment with some of the concepts we kick around here at AMV.

First up: Killer t-shirts

We’re launching a Spreadshirt store. The first offering is the traditional “advertise our blog t-shirt” — but with a twist. I’m not too keen on turning you all into walking billboards. In fact, I generally refuse to wear any item of clothing that prominently displays a logo. So here’s what I have come up with: the phrase A Motley Vision (which as you will recall is from an Orson F. Whitney poem) transliterated into the Deseret Alphabet. The t-shirts come in either white lettering on black t-shirts or black lettering on white t-shirts. The transliteration has been verified by AMV’s own Deseret Alphabet expert Katherine Morris and uses a true-type font created by Joshua Erickson. I don’t want you to advertise AMV: I want you to non-advertise it. And in so doing connect with the funky Mormon history we know and love. I personally love this concept. I have no idea how others are going to react. But for me, the idea of this alien set of characters on your chest that’s a phrase from the overwrought epic poem written by the godfather of Mormon literature and the name of the premiere Mormon arts blog totally cracks me up. And is also very, very cool.

Here’s what it looks like (click to view a larger size):

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