A while back, Minneapolis artist and designer Doug Pedersen became interested in the conversation of languages having a shelf life of 10,000 years and governments working on a universal radiation symbol for buried nuclear waste that could be understood by future societies.

Wondering what future language might look like, he entered his designs into Communication Arts magazine’s Typography Annual competition. His work was not only accepted, but also featured on the cover of that issue.

This week, TastySpace gallery inside Emergency Arts opens World to Come, an exhibit of Pedersen’s work, which includes Futureglyphics, the series of digitally created images that read as future language and symbols discovered long after being written. The prints, some containing three-dimensional renderings on distressed backgrounds, are engaging works both futuristic and primitive.

The exhibit also includes Pedersen’s “Untitled Collages” and “Dollar Store Animal.” “Collages” melds organic forms with mass-produced items (normally cast off into the trash bin) that were scanned or photographed for the digital compositions.

“Dollar Store Animals” is a study on items found at the dollar store. Plastic animal figures, sculpturally interesting in their own right, wear rich blankets of melted crayon drips. Some are monochromatic—a hippo or horse covered in solid blue. Others incorporate various hues—a dinosaur wearing shades of green, as if reflecting its natural habitat. The thoughtful and colorful photographs of mass-produced toys altered by crayons are stunning romps with American consumerism.