A grammar of icons for complex systems.
A transformative design system that encompasses a comprehensive pattern library, well-defined naming guidelines, a meticulously organized archive strategy, and clear interaction rules — a catalog of roots, a set of compositional rules, and a living treatise that lets your team coin new meanings without losing the thread.
08
Roots / dhātu
04
Compounds / samāsa
04
Essays in canon
Root index
Library (Dhātupāṭha)
An indexed catalog of visual roots and the compounds they generate. Each glyph is documented with its semantic field and the rule that produced it.
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Treatise
Essays (Shastra)
Living commentary on the grammar — euphonic joins for interfaces, closed and open registers, the principal designer as grammarian.
Enter
Compile
Lineage (Paramparā)
Select your roots, choose your essays, and bind a printable treatise. A snapshot that outlives any tool migration.
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Part I · Roots
The dhātu
Six irreducible primitives. Each carries one semantic load. Combined, they generate every compound in the language.
Part II · Compounds (Samāsa)
Compounds in the wild
Assigned Task
niyojita
A scoped artifact bearing an owner. Container holds the work; agent suffix holds responsibility.
adhara (base) + karta (suffix, top-right, scaled 60%). Multiple karta = co-owners.
Dependency
apeksha
Two containers bound by directional flow. The downstream container cannot resolve until upstream does.
adhara + pravaha + adhara. Reading order: left-to-right encodes precedence.
Milestone
prakasha
A discrete checkpoint with weight. The rhombus marks transition; the central dot marks fact.
disha (rotated 45 deg, doubled) + severity-dot (centered). Position on timeline encodes commitment date.
Origin · Lineage (Paramparā)
From a set of essays by Christopher Anthony.
The seed of Digital SanSkrit was planted in a series of articles Christopher Anthony wrote during his time at Citrix Systems, Microsoft, and Apple in 2006 — arguing that iconography for complex systems is not a style problem but a language problem, and that design systems deserve the same structural rigor as a formal grammar.
This site is that argument, made operational: a pattern library, naming guidelines, an archive strategy, and the interaction rules that bind them.
“The principal designer becomes a grammarian — not creating individual utterances, but defining the framework that enables consistent production across teams.”
— On Grammar, Not Glyphs