Bonus 67: Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox

The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is an iconic reference image which many linguists have pinned up somewhere to refer to. But its most familiar form is a not-especially-aesthetic technical diagram and we wondered, what if we made a more artistic version?  

In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic with Lucy Maddox, Lingthusiasm’s resident artist, about redesigning the IPA! We talk about how Lucy got interested in linguistics, how she got into art, how we started working with her, and the many design considerations that went into making a redesigned IPA chart: using New York City subway icons as inspiration for the circles, adding colours and a sans-serif font to differentiate it from the classic IPA chart (and why we definitely couldn’t use capitals), and integrating the vowel chart and the two consonant charts all into one diagram.  

Announcements:

We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths!

We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set!

• Lucy Maddox
• Historical versions of the International Phonetic Alphabet
• A thread from Gretchen on alternative versions of the IPA

Listen to the episode about our process to make an aesthetic IPA chart, get the lens cloth itself, and get access to our archive of many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. Sign up by October 6, 2022 for the lens cloth special offer.

The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is sometimes called the periodic table of linguistics – an important technical diagram that’s also visually interesting and which many linguists hang up on a wall, carry around inside a notebook, or simply know the exact keystrokes that’ll get them to a page to type or listen to it.

Like with the periodic table of the elements, the layout of the IPA chart is a key to what the symbols mean: from top to bottom, the chart goes roughly from sounds where the mouth is the most closed to the most open, and from left to right, it goes from sounds where the constriction is the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. This means that many linguists only know well the parts of the IPA that they encounter regularly in languages they work with, and rely on their knowledge of the overall structure to retrieve other parts on occasion. Hence the need to have it handy to refer to.

But there’s also an important way in which the IPA chart and the periodic table differ: art. If you want a handy reference chart of the elements for your wall or your pocket, there are hundreds of possible designs, ranging from subtle, minimalist designs that look like cool nerdy art to intricate, maximalist designs with all the technical detail you might possibly want to refer to.

With the International Phonetic Alphabet, most people are still printing out (or occasionally stickering, or laminating) the same greyscale diagram from the International Phonetic Association. We, your Lingthusiasm cohosts, have a lot of affection for this classic design, which we’ve spent many hours poring over (especially the forbidden grey areas, ahem), but we also wondered, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a more subtle, minimal version that would look more like weird-yet-stylish nerd art and less like a diagram from an academic paper?

Well…we know a linguist-artist. So we put this idea to Lucy Maddox, who’s brought you previous Lingthusiasm art such as the space babies, the schwa never stressed pins, the “thanks” and “congrats” greeting cards, the bouba/kiki shapes, and more. And Lucy was excited about it too!

After many months of back-and-forth on coming up with and refining the design, we’re very excited to share the near-final design with you! 

[Image description: an abstract, minimalist* rendering of the International Phonetic Alphabet as a grid of white, sans-serif letters on a midnight blue background, with no row or column headings. Bright green is used as an accent colour, for solid green circles around the voiceless consonants; white circles with green font for the rounded vowels, and narrow green borders around the lateral sounds. There’s a small lingthusiasm logo in the bottom corner and a translucent “demo” watermark splashed in the background.]

*Yes, we know there’s a syntax theory called Minimalism as well, which this has no real relationship to because it’s a different subfield. Consider it a bonus easter egg!

(By the way, the design still has “demo” on it because, while we’ve checked it with several very helpful phonetics/phonology friends, there remains a possibility that there’s a typo somewhere which the linguistics internet at large will tell us about before we get it printed. Hey, did we mention – if you notice a typo here, now would be a GREAT time to tell us about it before we print a zillion copies.)

We’ve actually recorded a whole episode chatting with Lucy about the design process, which will be September’s bonus episode, but a few brief notes about our design inspirations until then:

First, we were inspired by the ad-hoc IPA diagrams that linguists draw quickly on blackboards and notebooks when they want to discuss a point, which just have the minimal amount of information, and which generally don’t have any labels for the rows or columns. So we ditched the labels. This is an IPA chart for people who already understand the general principles of reading an IPA chart, even if they don’t quite remember all the symbols – everything should be figure-out-able based on its position relative to common, well-known symbols. Same with the various circles for non-positional information: if you know that the difference between /p/ and /b/ is that /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced, you can deduce that the solid green circle also indicates voicing for less familiar symbols. Or, if you’re inclined to puzzles, this is an IPA chart for people who enjoy the challenge of decoding what some cool-looking symbols mean based on some familiar ones with maybe an assist from Wikipedia or a clickable IPA chart.

But wait – this left us with a conundrum. The main consonant and vowel charts are totally decodable based on position. But there are also two other extra consonant charts which contain a grab-bag of other symbols arranged in no particularly decodable order. Simply removing the headings from these charts left them confusing. But after all, the IPA sounds are all produced with the same vocal apparatus…could we just fit them all into one diagram? It turns out that this (eventually, after much tweaking) looks really neat. And, we think, even makes these oft-disregarded consonants easier to remember.

Oh and by the way, since the 1900 version of the IPA chart had the consonants and vowels all on the same diagram, what if we included the vowels on there too? (We could not, alas, figure out a way of arranging the diacritics to make their meanings decodable from position only, so in the end we omitted them. If anyone does figure this out, please do let us know and we can talk about a revised version.)

With such a cool-looking IPA design, we also wanted to make it exist as a durable, tiny, lightweight object that you could carry with you everywhere and which might even be useful for secondary purposes. Which brings us to…lens cloths!

Lens cloths are a small, durable format for a reference image and you can use them to clean glasses, sunglasses, screens, camera lenses, and so on. Plus, they’re a kind of merch we’ve never been able to do before, because lens cloth printing companies want you to place orders in the hundreds or ideally thousands.

Thousands? Oh, that brings us to The Plan:

We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set! (That’s the tier where you also get bonus episodes and the Discord access, we’ve never run a special offer at this tier before but we think this time it’ll be worth it!)

If you want several IPA lens cloths, to give to friends or to make double extra sure you never leave home without one, you can also join the higher tiers (or stick around if you’re already there). Patrons as the Ling-phabet tier will get 4 lens cloths and patrons at the Phil-ling-thropist tier will receive 12, in addition to the other rewards at those tiers.

We’ve ordered sample lens cloths from several different companies and we’re really pleased with the quality of the company we’re planning on going with – the design will be entirely sublimated into the microfibre material so there’s nothing to scratch your lenses, and it has a satisfying thickness and image resolution. The lens cloth production company estimates about a 2 week turnaround on ordering, so we expect we’ll be mailing the lens cloths in late October or early November, which *should* be plenty of time for the major winter gifting holidays, assuming the supply chains cooperate.

We do also want to make this sleek aesthetic IPA chart design available on posters and possibly other objects (tell us what you’d be excited about in the comments below!) but that’s going to take a second phase of design work to also make the design look good as a rectangle in addition to a square and figure out some additional colour options to go with a variety of decors. To be honest, running the square design as a special offer is also a bit of a test-run/fundraiser for the rectangular stage of the design, since we’ve already put quite a lot of our own energy and paying-the-designer into it. If people aren’t as excited as we are about this idea, then maybe a rectangular version and/or more colours don’t need to exist. Which would be fine too! But, I mean, c'mon.

If you know other linguists or linguistics fans who might be excited to have a snazzy aesthetic IPA chart that they can carry around with them (plus, y'know, get access to the usual Patreon perks like bonus Lingthusiasm episodes and a Discord server that’s enthusiastic about linguistics), please help them find out about this before it’s too late! We are not planning to ever order a second batch of IPA lens cloths, so this is your one chance to get them.

Whew, that was a long post! Here’s the highlights: 

[Image description: What if the International Phonetic Alphabet looked like weird nerd art? Get this design (arrow to previously-described abstract IPA demo) on a handy-to-carry lens cloth (image of those microfibre cloths you clean glasses with; these are not the actual cloths but just to give you an idea of the genre). (Tiny abstract drawing of Lauren & Gretchen silhouettes from the website.) We’re placing one bulk order for everyone who’s a Lingthusiast patron or higher as of October 5, 2022. Sign up at patreon.com/lingthusiasm]

Stay lingthusiastic!

Gretchen and Lauren

Space babies and more new merch!

New merch alert! 

Space Babies

What language would we speak in space? Thanks to the Space Race, languages of space are English and Russian, and aboard the International Space Station, the astronauts and cosmonauts speak to each other in an English-Russian hybrid language, a sort of Space Pidgin. But of course, we wondered, if babies start being born in space, presumably they’d transform Space Pidgin into a fully grammatical Space Creole.

Based on the popularity of the languages of space moment in episodes 1 and 7, and the support of our patrons, Lingthusiasm has commissioned an artistic rendering of Space Babies communicating adorably with each other while they float through the cosmos, complete with tiny plush-toy Space Pigeon. (Longer story here.) Check out our linguist-turned-artist Lucy Maddox’s website for more of her ridiculously charming work.  

Space Babies are fictional, but real babies on earth deserve to have support in the full spectrum of human languages. A portion of the proceeds from the Space Baby merch will be donated to the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity.

SPACE BABY ART

Hang out with Space Babies to make your office or bedroom show off the mysteries of language and the wonders of the universe!

The classic Space Baby circle on a rectangular galaxy background, as a poster or as a more durable smallish four-ply art board.

SPACE BABY SCARVES

Wear some Space Babies around your neck to remind yourself to ponder the mysteries of language and the wonders of the universe as you go about your day!

Two Space Babies at each corner and two more in the centre of the scarf, for maximum draping versatility.

SPACE BABY PHONE CASE

Houston, we have a problem…your phone is insufficiently lingthusiastic!

A circle of ten Space Babies OR Space Pigeon on a case to adorn your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.  

SPACE BABY STICKERS

Adorn your laptop, notebook, or other hard-sided case with this international array of ten frolicking Space Babies on five stickers.

Five stickers all sold together on one page, in a durable vinyl finish: we strongly recommend getting the MEDIUM or LARGE size rather than the SMALL, as the designs on the small stickers get a little fuzzy around the edges.

SPACE PIGEON STICKER

The intrepid lil Space Pigeon plushie as its own full-sized sticker to hang out with you on your laptop or stickerboard.

All sizes are good for the Space Pigeon, because it’s a single sticker by itself.

SPACE PIGEON BABY CLOTHES

We couldn’t make merch with babies ON it without making it FOR babies! Space Pigeon available on baby t-shirts, short-sleeved onesies, or long-sleeved onesies, in a variety of colours. (We recommend black, navy, or dark grey for maximum Space Vibe.)

SPACE BABY/PIGEON T-SHIRTS

Space Babies (in a line OR in a circle) or Pigeon t-shirts are a subtle lingthusiastic nod as you go about your day! Adult t-shirts available in classic, fitted, and relaxed cuts on a variety of colours. (We recommend black, navy, or dark grey for maximum Space Vibe.)

SPACE BABY/PIGEON MUGS

Bring some cuteness to your kitchen or office with these mugs, available with Space Babies, or with Pigeon!

Plus, a few new non-Space Baby merch items

While we’re adding new merch, we also added a few new things in other categories!  

Not judging your grammar, just acquiring it - Baby clothes!

Babies can be descriptivists too!

Enjoy this playful riff on our original NOT JUDGING YOUR GRAMMAR, JUST ANALYSING IT t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, and zippered pouches for the too-young-to-be-analyst set. Baby shirts and onesies (short and long sleeved) in light grey on a variety of colours - the perfect gift for the linguist or language-nerd friend of yours who’s having a baby!

I want to be the English schwa. It’s never stressed. T-shirts!

Who wouldn’t want to be a schwa? Amuse the heck out of your fellow linguists with this soft-fabric, bold-message t-shirt, in light grey text on various colours and fitted, classic, and relaxed cuts.

IPA Scarves

New colours available! You can now check out scarves with an International Phonetic Alphabet print on them in white on plum, forest green, and royal blue, in addition to the existing colours of navy blue, red, olive, black, grey, light pink, teal, rainbow stripes, or rainbow with black and brown stripes.

(Not seeing a colour you’d love to wear? This is also a reminder that we’re happy to make custom colours of the IPA or tree diagram scarves for patrons at any level.)

IPA Ties

By popular request, we’re also making IPA ties available via Zazzle! 

The same IPA print as the scarves, but now smaller and on a necktie for your lingthusiastic formalwear needs! (Alas, we couldn’t find anywhere that would do custom single-order bowties - if anyone knows of a Redbubble/Zazzle-equivalent for bowties do let us know!) 

IPA ties are available in white print on navy blue, red, olive, grey, black, or light pink. (Custom colours again for patrons.)

Brought to you by Lingthusiasm: clothing and merch that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! Lingthusiasm the podcast transforms your boring commute or chores into a lively, nerdy conversation, and now you can wear your linguistics fandom on your sleeve, around your neck, and surrounding your coffee or books.

As ever, we’d love to see photos of any of the merch as part of your lives!