Heptapod - the Universal Language

When I first saw the film Arrival in 2016, I wasn’t expecting much. I had heard some interesting things about it, and the trailers looked good, but not once that day did I think I was about to watch a movie that was seemingly made for me. Even if you’re not me, please go watch it if you haven’t seen it, because it’s truly a phenomenal film. The reasons for my praise of this movie are many, but for the purposes of this website I’ll focus on its most famous element: the alien language. If you don’t know, the events of Arrival surround the efforts of linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to communicate with a visiting alien race. Their written language, designed by Patrice Vermette (among many others), is comprised of inky black circles, and as soon as I saw it I was in love. Almost as soon as I was home I began attempting to create my logograms, and in the coming weeks and months I gathered together as much information as I could about the language. After a while I noticed some patterns, and while I’m no linguistic expert I’ve come to know lots of the ins and outs of the heptapod “language.” Now my favorite things to do are to put heptapod words into other art and design contexts, and I’m currently assembling a “dictionary” of heptapod words and phrases. I hope you enjoy the work I’ve done so far!