Calligraphers Guild

The Calligraphers Guild creates (and Isaac suspects controls to a certain extent) the official glyphs. If a new glyph needs to be made, they do it in a way they see as proper, based on canonized rules that have developed over time.

According to Issac, this doesn't keep amateur glyphmakers from creating things from time to time, and there's certainly a shift in shape as glyphs morph through the ages. Isaac's view is that the Guild is probably a lot like the Oxford English Dictionary occasionally canonizing popular but unauthorized glyphs that get used so much that they become ubiquitous.

Also according to Isaac, it's just guild members who are morphing glyphs into poems and such. If a nobleperson wants a glyph for their house, they go to someone authorized by the guild, and they'll stylize things into a crown, a hammer, etc.. Readers have seen House Kholin's Tower and Crown.

Additionally according to Isaac, the Calligrapher's Guild has rules they follow in creating glyphs, and there's a lot of artistic license, for the very reason that the guild isn't expecting people to read the glyphs as they are recognized rather than read. Those in the guild - and some scholars who are interested in how glyphs morph over time - might be able to decipher some of the glyphs for academic purposes.

According to Nazh, the darkest secret of the guild is that the phonemes within a glyph can sometimes be deciphered.

Also according to Nazh, the instructors in the guild, especially the self-proclaimed calligro-cartographer Isasik Shulin, have repeatedly told him that it is futile to pick apart the phonemes from old glyphs.

Notes

Symbol for the Calligraphers Guild
Artwork by Isaac Stewart

The stamp-like glyph at the bottom corner of the "Ironstance Scroll" artwork in Words of Radiance is the symbol of the Calligrapher's Guild. It uses the phonemes from "Isaac", but doesn't phonetically represent that.

Addendum

Again according to Isaac, the biggest influence for the glyphs was Arabic word art and calligraphy. That's something Brandon and he wanted to do from the start, and he realized that in order to make both glyphs and word art work, he'd have to take things a step further and figure out the building blocks of the glyphs.

Further, according to Isaac, the second biggest influence was the need for the glyphs to be symmetrical to reflect the holiness of symmetry within Vorin culture.