Some time during the past week I got in my head that it would be really neat to make an alphabet with only circular pie pieces, using the fillArc method of the java graphics class. The filled arc is great because it is so versatile -- it can be a filled semicircle, a long sliver, or a pac-man shape. I discovered that nearly all of the letters could be designed reasonably using only one or two circular filled arcs. The few that couldn't, I tried to make work. (Maybe you can tell which these were!) I think this is an interesting solution since each letter is encoded by only ten variables -- a center x and y point, radius, start angle and end angle, times two.

Since each letter is devised from two filled arcs, it becomes easy to transition between any two letters in a smooth way. Here, the letters change interactively as you type new characters in. The blur factor controls the speed of these transitions.