A PICTOGRAPH AND ARTICLES WHICH USE THE PICTOGRAPH

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a method of creating a pictograph, articles made in using the pictograph and uses of the pictograph including encoding/encryption.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph from one or more words, the words comprising characters of an alphabet, the method comprising: providing a shape defined by a line; dividing the line into a number of segments; marking one or more of the segments; wherein one of the following is the case: the number of segments is related to the number of characters in the alphabet, there is a segment corresponding to each respective character of the alphabet, the segments marked correspond to each character in the one or more words, and an attribute of each marked segment is related to the position of the corresponding character of the one or more words; the number of segments is related to the number of characters in the one or more words, each segment corresponds to a position of a character in the one or more words, and each segment is marked such that an attribute of each marked segment designates the character at the respective position in the one or more words.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph from one or more words, the words comprising characters of an alphabet, the method comprising: providing a shape defined by a line;

dividing the line into a number of segments, wherein the number of segments is related to the number of characters in the alphabet, wherein there is a segment corresponding to each respective character of the alphabet ; marking segments corresponding to each character in the one or more words, wherein an attribute of each marked segment is related to the position of the corresponding character of the one or more words.

In an embodiment the attribute is the length of the marking .

In an embodiment the shape is a basic shape having a centre point.

In an embodiment the segments are partitioned into radially positioned parts wherein the number of parts is related to the number of character positions in the one or more words. In an embodiment the markers extend radially- over one or more parts according to the length of the marking .

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph of one or more words, the words comprising letters of an alphabet, the method comprising: providing a basic shape having a centre point; radially dividing the basic shape into a number of segments, the number of segments being related to the number of letters in the alphabet, wherein each segment corresponds to one of the letters of the alphabet; partitioning each segment into radially positioned parts, the number of parts being related to the number of letters in the one or more words; and providing a marker at the position of the segment corresponding to each letter of the one or more words,

each marker extending across a number of respective parts ' of the respective segment related to the respective position of the corresponding letter in the one or more words .

In one embodiment the radial depth of each part in a segment is a distance unit. Typically the radial depth of each part in a segment is the same. In one embodiment the number of parts is equal to the number of letters in the one or more words. In another embodiment the number of parts is equal to the number of unique occurrences of letters in the one or more words.

In one embodiment the number of segments is equal to the number of letters in the alphabet .

Typically the basic shape is a circle. Typically the alphabet is the Roman alphabet (Latin) . Alternative alphabets comprise the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Arabic alphabet, Chinese script alphabets, and Hindi alphabet (Devanagari) .

In one embodiment the markers are inwardly directed from the perimeter of the basic shape. In an alternative embodiment the markers are outwardly directed from the centre point .

In one embodiment the sequence of the markers corresponds to the normal direction of reading the one or more words. In another embodiment the sequence of the markers corresponds to the inverse of the normal direction of reading the one or more words .

In one embodiment the marker is emboldened or embellished. The marker may be emboldened by overlaying a shape on the marker. The shape may be for example a triangle.

In one embodiment the perimeter of the basic shape is thickened.

In one embodiment the pictograph is applied to an item of jewellery. In other embodiments the pictograph is applied to one of the following: art work, puzzle, game, toy, clothing, merchandise, paper, computer screen, television, electronic display.

In one embodiment the marker is placed in between divisions of the respective segment and adjacent segments. Typically the marker is placed in the middle of the segment . In another embodiment the marker is placed on one of the divisions to an adjacent segment and the letters are allocated to each one of the segment divisions.

In one embodiment the pictograph is used to encode the one or more words .

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention there is provided an article to which the pictograph has been applied or which is shaped according to the pictograph.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph of one or more words, the words comprising letters of an alphabet, the method comprising:

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providing a basic shape having a centre point; radially dividing the basic shape into a number of segments from the centre point, the number of divisions between segments being equal to the number of letters in the alphabet, wherein each segment division corresponds to one of the letters of the alphabet; dividing the length of each segment division into distance units, the number of distance units being related to the number of letters in the one or more words; and sequentially providing a marker at the position of the segment division corresponding to each letter of the one or more words, each marker having a length in distance units of the respective segment division equal to the respective position of the corresponding letter in the one or more words.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention there is provided an article representing one or more words having characters of an alphabet, the article being manufactured by a method comprising: determining a pictograph shape comprising providing a shape defined by a line, dividing the line into a number of segments, the number of segments being equal to the number of characters in the alphabet , wherein each segment corresponds to one of the letters of the alphabet, marking lines on segments corresponding to each character in the one or more words, wherein the markings each have an attribute related to the respective position of the corresponding character in the one or more words; creating the article shaped according to the lines of the determined pictograph shape.

According to the seventh aspect of the present invention there is provided a pictograph comprising: a plurality of radially extending segments which

extend towards or from a centre point ; the segments being of a length and positioning such that: the angular position of each segment from a starting point indicates a letter; and the length of each segment indicates an order of the letters; whereby the letters indicated and the order of the letter indicated represents one or more words.

According to the eighth aspect of the present invention there is a method of encoding one or more words into a pictograph, the words comprising letters of an alphabet, the method comprising: providing a basic shape having a centre point; radially dividing the basic shape into a number of segments from the centre point, the number of segments being equal to the number of letters in the alphabet, wherein each segment corresponds to one of the letters of the alphabet ; dividing the radial length of the segments into distance units, the number of distance units being equal to the number of letters in the one or more words; and sequentially providing a marker at the position on the segment corresponding to each letter of the one or more words, each marker having a length in distance units equal to the respective position of the corresponding letter in the one or more words .

According to the ninth aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of decoding a pictograph having a plurality of radially extending markers which extend towards/from a centre point, the method comprising: determining length of each marker; determining the angular position of each marker from

a starting point; determining a letter from the determined angular positions of each marker; determining an order of the determined letters from the determined length of the corresponding marker.

In one embodiment the angle between any two markers determines the alphabet of the determined letters .

According to the tenth aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph of one or more words, the method comprising: radially dividing a circle into twenty six segments from a centre point of the circle such that there are twenty six segment divisions, wherein each segment division corresponds to one of the letters of the Roman alphabet; dividing the length of each segment division into distance units, the number of distance units being equal to the number of letters in the one or more words; and sequentially providing a marker at the position of the segment division corresponding to each letter of the one or more words, each marker having a length in distance units of the respective segment division equal to the respective position of the corresponding letter in the one or more words .

According to an eleventh aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of creating a pictograph from one or more words, the words comprising characters of an alphabet, the method comprising: providing a shape defined by a line,- dividing the line into a number of segments, wherein

the number of segments is related to the number of characters in the one or more words, wherein each segment corresponds to a position of a character in the one or more words,- marking each segment such that an attribute of each marked segment designated the character at the respective position in the one or more words.

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

In order to provide a better understanding of the present invention, embodiments will be described by way of example only, with reference to the accompanied drawings, in which: Figure 1 is an illustration of a first step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 2 is an illustration of a second step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 3 is an illustration of a third step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 4 is an illustration of a fourth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 5 is an illustration of a fifth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; Figure 6 is an illustration of a sixth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 7 is an illustration of a seventh step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

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Figure 8 is an illustration of an eighth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 9 is an illustration of a ninth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 10 is an illustration of a tenth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; Figure 11 is an illustration of an eleventh step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 12 is an illustration of a twelfth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 13 is an illustration of a thirteenth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 14 is an illustration of a fourteenth step in a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 15 is an illustration of a flow chart showing steps of a method of forming a pictograph in accordance with the present invention; Figure 16 is an illustration of a flow chart showing a relationship between a computer program for forming a pictograph in accordance with the present invention and application for use of the computer program; and

Figure 17 is an illustration of a relationship diagram showing potential uses of a pictogram formed in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

This embodiment forms a pictograph of a word, namely the surname of the inventor GRIFFYN. It will be appreciated that any other word or words may be used and indeed words

which are in languages other than English may be used to form a pictograph. Furthermore in the present embodiment the Roman alphabet is used (sometimes also known as the Latin alphabet) . It will be appreciated that words in other alphabets may be used; examples of such other alphabets include the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Arabic alphabet, Chinese script alphabets and Hindi alphabet (known as Devanagari) . It will be appreciated that other alphabets may also be used. As is well known the Roman alphabet comprises 26 letters. The pictograph is referred to as a literal symbol in the drawings .

Figures 1 to 14 show progressive steps in forming a pictograph 100 (in Figure 14) which has been created, using the surname of the inventor GRIFFYN, according to an embodiment of the present invention. The embodiment follows the method 200 of creating a determined shape which will form the pictograph as shown in the flow chart of Figure 15. The process starts at 210 by selecting a basic shape defined by a line, such as a circle 10 in Figure 1. Other basic shapes such as a straight line, a curved line, a continuous line, triangles, squares, rectangles, pentagons, octagons etc can be used. At 220 the circle 10 is divided into a number of segments 12 equal to the number of letters in the alphabet, by segment dividers 14. In this case there are 26 letters so there are 26 segments. A segment divider is a line radially extending from centre point 16 of the circle 10. Due to there being 26 divider lines the angle between each divider line is 13.85° (to 2 decimal places).

Where an alternative alphabet is used the shape is divided up into the number of characters in that particular alphabet or in some cases a subset of characters or letters in that alphabet .

In this embodiment it is preferred that each of the letters is sequentially allocated to segments. The allocation need not be sequential in the order of the letters. A different sequence may be used.

Each of the segments 12 is sequentially allocated 230 to a letter 18 in the alphabet as shown in Figure 3. Alternatively each of the divider lines may be allocated to a letter in the alphabet .

A word is then selected or received at 240 to apply to the basic shape to form the pictograph. The number of letters in the word is determined. Alternatively the number of unique occurrences of letters in the word is determined. At 250, as shown in Figure 4, the radius of the circle is partitioned or divided by the number of letters in the word. In this case GRIFFYN has seven letters, thus there are seven partitions 20 to the circle radius between the centre 16 and the circumference 24, such that there are seven discrete distances from the circumference towards the centre or vice versa (excluding a distance of zero) . The distance between two adjacent partitions 20 is referred to as a distance unit. Each partition 20 to the next 20'and the segment dividers 14 define a part 22. Thus the number of parts 22 to a segment 12 will be equal to the number of letters in the word or words. In the case of the number of uniquely occurring letters being used instead of the number of letters, the radius is partitioned into the number of uniquely occurring letters. In the GRIFFYN example, there will be six uniquely occurring letters due to the double F. Accordingly the radius will be divided into six distances.

In an alternative embodiment, the divisions may be made through part of the radius. In this embodiment a portion of the pictograph will be blank. In a further alternative embodiment the number of divisions may be more than the

number of letters so that marks do not extend the full length of the radius. This may be achieved, for example by dividing the radius into one more than the number of letters in the word, such as eight in the present embodiment .

The next step at 260 is for a line is to be marked at each segment (or segment divider if the letters are allocated to segment dividers) corresponding to each letter in the word. The mark extends across a number of parts and has a length in distance units corresponding to the position of the letter in the word. For example, the first letter in the word GRIFFYN is a G. The position of the G is marked with a line 26. Since the G is the first letter of the word, the length of the mark is one distance unit and it extends across one part. This is depicted in Figure 5. In this case the mark 26 is from the circumference 24 of the circle 10 towards the centre point 16. It is noted that in another embodiment the marks may extend from the centre point 16 towards the circumference 24. Other arrangements for marking the segments/parts may be possible, such as arcs orbiting the centre point 16.

This process is repeated for each letter in the word or words at 270. Thus if there is another letter still to go the process returns 280 to step 260. Otherwise if all of the letters have been marked the process of creating the determined shape that forms the pictograph finishes at 290.

To complete the example, as shown in Figure 6, the letter R is the second letter in the word GRIFFYN and thus a mark 28 is placed so as to extend across two parts from the circumference towards the centre at the position of the R having a length of the distance units.

As shown in Figure 7, the third letter in the word GRIFPYN is an I and thus the I position is marked 30 three distance units. The fourth letter in the word GRIFFYN is an F, thus the F position is marked 32 four distance units. The fifth letter in the word GRIFFYN is also an F, thus the mark at the F position is marked 34 five distance units. Due to the marks overlapping over four distance units the only different seen is an extension of one distance unit across the innermost part 36. As shown in Figure 10 the sixth letter in the word GRIFFYN is a Y, thus the mark 38 is placed at the Y position extending inwardly from the circumference towards the centre point six distance units.

As shown in Figure 11, the seventh letter in the word GRIFFYN is an N, thus the mark 40 extends from the circumference to the centre point seven distance units, fully extending the length of the radius.

Also shown in Figure 11, the circle is expanded to form an annulus 44 with the distance between the inner circumference 24 and the outer circumference 42 of the annulus 44 being one distance unit.

As shown in Figure 12 the marks can then be embellished by being overlaid with another shape such as for example an inwardly directed triangle 46. Where there are two or more letters of the same type, embellishment can be used to indicate not only that there are more than one letter, but can be used to identify each position. Thus the final determined shape is shown in Figure 13. This shape can then be applied to an article 100 in Figure 14. Thus the pictograph has been applied to an article, in this case a piece of jewellery. The article may be formed of or coated with a precious metal with the shape of the article representing a pictograph of the word.

In another embodiment the segments may represent the position of a letter in the one or more words and the number of parts may represent the letters in the alphabet .

It will be appreciated that the method of the present invention may be embodied in the form of computer software to undertake the steps of forming the pictogram. The computer software is in the form of computer instructions to control the computer to undertake the method. The computer may be in a variety of forms, such as a desktop machine, a server, a laptop, or a mobile computing device such as a mobile telephone.

The computer software will find many applications as illustrated in Figure 16, such as in an e-commerce site in which personalised articles having the pictogram can be created, designed, and applied and then sold. Additionally the pictogram can be applied to two dimensional articles such that they can be purchased for download, such as printing or by some other application to t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads etc.

The method of the present invention may also be used in encryption. Such encryption may be relatively simple to encode and decode. Thus it may be more suitable for children to use. However additional levels of sophistication can be added to the encryption by varying the sequence of allocation of letter by varying the basic symbol, by having combinations of the embellishment to the markers, by having both inwardly and outwardly directed markers and by numerous other variations which can increase the number of combinations that a pictogram can have. A key representing the starting symbol shape, the starting positions, the sequence of allocation of letters etc, may allow such a pictograph to be decoded/decrypted into the original one or more words while still increasing

the difficulty of decrypting or decoding the pictograph without access to the key.

Within this specification the term "alphabet" intended to be interpreted broadly and may include a set of characters that include more than what is normally considered to be letters . For example a numeric alphabet might consist of digits, where each "letter" is a digit from 0 to 9. It will therefore be appreciated that other characters aside from normal letters may be used to form markers, such as numerals, punctuation marks etc. Thus an alphabet could include letters, numerals, spaces, punctuation marks etc.

The number of characters can be determined by the angle between markers. For example, a normal Roman alphabet will have 26 letters and therefore the angle between markers will be a multiple of 13.85 degrees. In a digit alphabet, there are 10 characters (or letters) with the angle between markers will be a multiple of 36 degrees. Thus by determining the angle between markers the number of characters in the alphabet can be determined. This in turn can be used to identify the alphabet used.

The computer software can be used as a toy, game or simple form of entertainment in the form of a program that encodes and decodes pictographs. Thus coded messages can be exchanged by email, message service or non volatile forms of memory such as disk, memory stick etc. A pictograph of the present invention can be used to personalise content of digital devices such as on wallpaper, screen saver, icons in either static or animated form. Animated form may step through the process of creation of the pictograph.

The computer software may also be used on a server whereby customers submit words to be encoded in a pictograph according to the present invention, the software creates

the encoded pictograph and then sends it to the customer. Alternatively, the computer software may be a personalised application which can generate personal pictographs on the user's electronic device.

The computer software may generate a pictograph according to the present invention and it may be applied within computer games or simulations, such as avatars in on-line virtual worlds .

The computer software can also be used in a 3 dimensional design studio where a 3D CAD program can be used to aid the design of articles to which the pictograph is applied. For example the software can be used to produce jewellery, brand merchandise, artistic works etc.

The method of creating a pictograph can be used to create an encoder/decoder toy device where the pictograph is devised using a hand encoding and decoding.

The pictograph can be used in a number of different fields of endeavour as shown in Figure 17. A fictional story incorporating aspects of the art and methodology that is involved in creating the pictograph and other concepts can be devised by an author of the piece of fiction and used therein. The pictograph can be used in an animated series or in film production, merchandise or electronic games. The pictograph can also be used in mind teaser puzzles . For example a puzzle system may incorporate encoding and decoding aspects of forming a pictograph by encoding a word into a pictograph and decoding one or more words from the pictograph can be used. This can be incorporated into a word puzzle or into a puzzle to represent one or more words .

The pictograph can also be used in non-fiction. The method can be used to create a pictograph with pencil and

other tools for entertainment or other purposes. The marks can be applied to each segment or each division between the segments. In this context where segment is referred to, it is also intended to refer to the segment division.

In jurisdictions where these forms of endeavour are not patentable, they are to be considered excluded from the scope of the accompanying claims.

It will be understood to persons skilled in the art of the invention that many modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Throughout this specification, except where the context requires otherwise due to express language or necessary implication, the words "comprise" or variations such as "comprises" or "comprising" are used in an inclusive sense, i.e. to specify the presence of the stated features but not to preclude the presence or addition of further features in various embodiments of the invention.