Allkin

A thumbs-up can mean yes, thank you or the number 1, and Allkin draws it once and lets it carry all 3. Several of its symbols double up like that. The Monotype Design Studio drew 195 hand gestures, a count chosen to match the 193 member states of the United Nations plus its 2 observer states, and sorted them into groups for basic needs, social signs, emotions, and warnings about conflict and peace. Gestures can be combined into longer messages, messages about peace among them.

Monotype is open about the risk. A gesture that is friendly in 1 culture can mean something else entirely in the next, so the set sometimes offers more than 1 hand for the same meaning, and the project on GitHub asks people to add their own.

The hands are drawn as a system: finger thickness, the white gaps between fingers and the proportions of the palm are kept the same across every symbol, close to a real hand without tipping into cartoon. Monotype’s advice is to show them big, near the size of an actual hand, and we agree; on a wall sign or a clinic door they read at once, while in a paragraph they would vanish.