Hexaglyph

Hex for hexadecimal, glyph for a written sign: a way to write every byte, two hexadecimal digits, as one small shape that a person can read and a camera can scan.

The word “Hexaglyph” written in Hexaglyphs, with each character’s code beneath it.

How to read one

Each glyph hangs on a short bar, the stave. The high hex digit sits above it and the low digit below, each in a small square against the stave. Every digit is built from four marks that add up:

• 1 the left side, 2 the right side, 4 the outer edge, 8 a dot in the middle.
• So 0 is nothing, 3 is both sides, 7 is an open box and F a closed box with a dot. The two halves mirror each other across the stave.
• Letters are their keyboard codes: digits have both sides above the stave (3), capitals A–O the top bar (4), P–Z add the left side (5), lowercase a–o add the right side (6), p–z close the box (7).

It grew out of the medieval Cistercian monks’ numerals, which hung digits on a stave, by way of the Reformed Cistercian Hexadecimal Numerals shared on Reddit and the readable codes at humanqr.odd.place, where Hexaglyph was first used to pack text into a code about as compact as a QR code.

Explore

The Hexaglyph font