The Malleable Glyph Challenge Home

What is a Malleable Glyph?

Malleable Glyph is a small graphical design, fitting exactly to a square of 1×1 inch. It is "shaped" by a numerical parameter x ranging from 0.0 to 100.0.

For example, a very simple malleable glyph is a horizontal line that is extremely short for x=0.0 and as long as possible for x=100.0:

horizontal line image

Like every other graphical design, certain malleable glyph can be prettier or uglier. But there is another property of a malleably glyph that we are also interested in: its resolution, or how many different "sizes" of the glyph can be recognized by a naked human eye.

For example, a scaled five-pointed star has a somewhat better resolution than the simple horizontal line.

five-pointed star vs. horizontal line image

See a detailed description of what a Malleable Glyph is and how to make one.

What is The Malleable Glyph Challenge?

It is possible to objectively evaluate the resolution of a malleable glyph compared to other glyph designs. For example, the following three glyphs were evaluated by human subjects using our evaluation tool:

three simple but different glyphs

the evaluation plot

The chart compares the resolution of the three glyphs. Lower curve is better than a higher curve.

Malleable glyphs can differ in countless graphical aspects: shape, color, texture, complexity, fractal structure, use of the space, contrast, etc., etc. We are interested in what features make one malleable glyph design better than another. And we would love to see designs that so cleverly and so knowledgeably use the 1×1 inch space that they overcome other designs.

We challenge anyone and everyone to design the best malleable glyph ever. We pledge to evaluate submitted malleable glyphs in a fair manner. We intend to periodically publish the top-performing malleable glyph designs and to analyze what factors seem to be strong and useful. We invite the designers of top-perforing and influential malleable glyphs to co-author the scientific publications and to join us in deepening the knowledge and understanding of human perception and graphical design.

See a detailed description of The Malleable Glyph Challenge rules and organization.

Use the Self-Evaluation Tool

1. Create one or more glyphs, export them to files.

2. Put your exported glyphs into our Self-Evaluation Tool.

3. See for yourself how your glyphs are performing.

The Self-Evaluation Tool works entirely in your web browser. Glyphs that you insert into the tool are not uploaded anywhere, but they stay in your computer.

See details of the Self-Evaluation Tool.

Submit your super-performing glyph to The Challenge

coming soon...