Director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer created a fully functioning, visual, alien language. Heisserer, Villeneuve, and their teams managed to create a "logogram bible", which included over a hundred different, completely operative logograms, seventy-one of which are actually used in the movie.
The inky circular alien language was created by Montreal artist Martine Bertrand. It is also the artist's son who created Hannah's drawings.
While the shape of the ship was decided early on, Denis Villeneuve had great difficulty imagining an interior that would allow humans to easily navigate through such a steep and vertical design. The later decision to turn gravity sideways offered an obvious and convenient solution.
Ted Chiang, who wrote the story the film is based upon, approved the film, saying, "I think it's that rarest of the rare in that it's both a good movie and a good adaptation... And when you consider the track record of adaptations of written science fiction, that's almost literally a miracle."
The original name for the film was "Story of Your Life," the same as the source novella. Test audiences did not like that title, so it was changed to "Arrival."