Every three months, a language — an irreplaceable key to understanding the world — fades away. By the end of the century, as much as 90% of the world’s 6,500 languages will be gone forever.

Losing a language is more than losing a collection of words. It’s deep knowledge passed down over millennia — gone. Rituals and recipes. Myths and memories, erased. And for those who spoke the language, it means losing a part of themselves.

By rethinking, redesigning, and integrating a newly created alphabet — ADLaM — into the digital world, we were able to help preserve

The Fulani people of West Africa are the world’s largest nomadic group.

Pulaar, their native tongue, existed without an alphabet for generations. They relied on spoken word to pass down traditions, codify their history, and conduct business. Without an alphabet, illiteracy thrives and written records, poems, songs and stories must be cobbled together using various foreign alphabets. Determined to preserve their people’s language, two brothers, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, created a handwritten alphabet for Pulaar— ADLaM.

In 2023 the vast majority of the world communicates exclusively in the digital landscape. An alphabet is only as good as people’s ability to use it for texting, emailing and collaborating. A modern alphabet must be available on computers in order to be relevant and functional.

The objective was to turn ADLaM into a globally recognized and digitally used mode of communication for the 40 million Fulani across the planet.

To help preserve the Pulaar language — and help fight illiteracy within the community — we worked with the Barry brothers to rebuild ADLaM for the digital age and put it in the hands of the 40 million Fulani across the globe, connecting through technology.

While alphabets usually take hundreds of years to evolve into their final form, we were able to speed the process, using real-time community feedback to revise ADLaM’s outdated letterforms.

This new version of the alphabet is being made accessible on over one billion devices around the world, enhancing the Fulani’s access to educational, business and social tools—ensuring both the language and culture ADLaM represents live on for generations.

And because schools are the primary entry point for learning the alphabet, we developed a collection of learning materials — books and posters in print and digital — that celebrate the rich culture of the Fulani.

How do you help preserve a culture? The 40-million-person diaspora remained connected online using language cobbled together from various foreign alphabets. For generations, they’ve relied on the spoken word of Pulaar — their native tongue — to pass down traditions and history, and to conduct business. But as their culture transferred to the digital world, their language needed to as well.

We aimed to help the Fulani people in the preservation of their culture by creating a new and optimized version of their new alphabet — ADLaM — that would help them navigate an increasingly digital world on their own terms.

As part of our strategy, we also wanted to fight the high illiteracy rates in the Fulani. By making ADLaM letterforms easier to read and write, and optimizing them for digital spaces, students around the world would feel more included as the community advanced into the 21st Century.

After ADLaM was encoded, community feedback revealed major revisions were needed to make the alphabet easier to learn, read and write. Working with the Barry brothers, typeface experts and Fulani graphic culture specialists, we revised the letterforms of the alphabet creating a new, optimized version.

Taking inspiration from Fulani visual culture, we researched hundreds of traditional textile patterns and designs, uncovering their unique meanings to define the final form of the characters. By weaving their heritage into the solution, the Fulani saw themselves in their very own alphabet.

The revised alphabet is being made accessible on over 1 billion devices running Microsoft 365 Office, through a new typeface — ADLaM Display.

We then developed learning tools to promote literacy in Guinean schools, including a children’s book, instructional workbooks and classroom posters designed to teach the alphabet

These combined efforts helped ADLaM gain popularity within the Fulani community — helping secure the future of the alphabet and their culture for future generations:

1. ADLaM is being made accessible on over 1 billion devices worldwide.

2. The alphabet will also be used to preserve the Bambara, Bozo and Dogon languages due to shared phonology and syntax with Pulaar.

3. Guinea’s Minister of Education is taking steps to ensure ADLaM is recognized as Pulaar’s official alphabet.

4. The first two ADLaM-focused schools will open this year in Guinea and for the first time, allow Fulani children to study a full curriculum in their native tongue.

5. The Government of Mali is in the process of recognizing ADLaM as an official alphabet in their constitution.

6. The new alphabet is being used on social media to fight illiteracy.The project also sparked the co-creation of the first ADLaM dictionary, through #ADLaMRe.