Baybayin Revival Graphics × Mongol Bichig Calligraphy

Baybayin Revival Graphics: Baybayin is shared heritage, but its revival touches living Indigenous scripts and contested claims. Hanunóo, Buhid and Tagbanwa are still written by their communities, the Mangyan of Mindoro and the Tagbanwa and Pala'wan of Palawan, and their documents are on UNESCO's Memory of the World register (1999, 'Philippine Paleographs'); do not use their letters, ambahan verses or community signage as generic 'baybayin', and work with the communities and bodies such as the Mangyan Heritage Center when their scripts are involved. Baybayin wrote Tagalog and neighbouring lowland languages, and Kapampangan Kulitan has its own form and keepers, so do not present baybayin as the old writing of every Filipino people; even the bills moved in 2022 from a baybayin-only national script to baybayin 'and other indigenous and traditional writing systems'. 'Alibata', coined by Paul Versoza in 1914 from the Arabic alif-ba-ta, is a misnomer. Have every word spelled by a reader of the script: it writes syllables, so English spelled letter by letter, wrong or missing kudlit, mirrored glyphs and invented letters read as nonsense, and a tattoo makes the error permanent; write personal and organisation names in Latin unless the bearer has chosen a baybayin spelling. Image models cannot write baybayin and invent glyphs: leave the sign blank or set real text in a Unicode font (one that covers ra and the pamudpod, with the text entered as Unicode, not typed on Latin keys mapped to glyphs), and never present generated pseudo-script as genuine. Some of the best-known baybayin emblems carry politics: the CCP's triple ka is, in the Inquirer's words, a remnant of the Marcos New Society, and the ka in a rayed sun, attributed to the Katipunan, was flown by the July 2003 mutineers the press called the Magdalo Group and is the logo of the Magdalo party-list; do not use them as neutral Filipino marks. Agency seals, state insignia and the peso notes are official marks, so draw new emblems instead of copying them. Baybayin tattoos sit beside batok, the Indigenous hand-tapped tattooing whose patterns, placements and rituals belong to particular ethnolinguistic groups and their practitioners: a baybayin word does not license batok patterns or hand-tapping outside those lineages, and invented tribal motifs must not pass as Indigenous designs. Credit or commission Filipino calligraphers, type designers and tattoo artists.

Mongol Bichig Calligraphy & Ugalz Ornament: Mongol bichig is the living script of Mongols in Mongolia and in Inner Mongolia, where in 2020 China moved three school subjects in Mongolian-medium schools into Mandarin, met by protests and school boycotts; UNESCO lists Mongolian calligraphy as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding, and at inscription in 2013 only three scholars were training just over twenty young calligraphers. Have every word written or checked by a fluent reader or calligrapher: letters change shape by position, so pseudo-script, mirrored text, text rotated the wrong way and letters broken up as texture read as nonsense. The Soyombo is a state symbol on the flag and emblem, and Mongolia regulates the use of its state symbols by law (Constitution, Article 12(7)): the Law on State Symbols (1994) forbids disparaging them and imitating the State Seal. The endless knot, wishing jewel and lotus are Buddhist auspicious signs; keep them and the state symbols out of trivial or demeaning uses. The khas (swastika) is an old Mongolian sign of good fortune but reads as the Nazi swastika to many audiences, so avoid it outside a context that explains it, and commission or credit Mongolian calligraphers and craftspeople rather than tracing their work.