Friday, December 3, 2010

Early Writing


                Around 3000 B.C., the first form of writing emerged. Cuneiform, as it is called, started by pressing blunt reeds into wet clay. Written left to right, Cuneiform allowed right handers to see what they were scribing, and it was comprised of basic illustrative forms. From 2613 B.C. to 2160 B.C., Hieroglyphics appeared as the Egyptian way of written communication. Hieroglyphics, or “sacred carvings”, were carved into stone or clay. They could be read as ideograms, pictures that tell an entire idea, or as phonograms, sounds that make a word. The next form of writing was Early Greek, which evolved in 5th century B.C. Early Greek could be written left to right or right to left, but was printed in similar to Early Greek, was drawn into stone and was sanserif. Classical Roman Lapidary, 1st century B.C., may have possibly had a sort of stamping system, because letters were carved from stone and painted on with a brush.  Roman Capitals, in 1st century A.D., were an attempt at copying the carved out stones of Classical Roman Lapidary. They were scribed on vellum.  In 5th century A.D., the Romans adapted the Greeks’ uncial letter and created the Roman Uncials, which was named because they were a “Roman inch in height”.  Following these Roman scripts, most systems of writing were written on forms of paper, such as Roman Half Uncials in the 5th century, the Irish Half Uncials in the 8th century, and the Carolingian Minuscule & Majuscule in the 9th to 10th century. After these, the father of modern day printing, Johann Gutenberg, created the printing press and written documentation was changed.

http://www.designhistory.org/

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Symbols












     Symbols, throughout history, have been diverse and significant in our culture. There are countless symbols and icons, which are especially rampant in today’s society. Symbols can be broken down into categories, such as pictograms, phonograms, ideograms, logos, and trademarks. Pictograms are images that characterize an object, and most symbols can be placed in this category. The Chinese written language completely consists of pictograms, or drawn images. It has 80,000 characters, but only 3,500 are used regularly. A phonogram can be either an image or a particular letter that reads as a spoken sound. One of the most well know symbols, that is a phonogram is the “I Love New York “signage created by Milton Glaser. This particular symbol has been used from the 1970s to present day to elevate New York’s tourism. It has, also, been transformed for many other cities and activities.  An ideogram represents an entire idea by way of images. An example of ideograms would be road-warning signs, such as “falling rocks” which entails a graphic that show rocks falling onto a car from the side of a cliff or mountain.  Another example of an ideogram is the “no smoking” sign, which provide the whole idea of “please, no smoking in this particular area”.  Logos represent brands, while trademarks give authority to the brand. Logotype is a commonly used word for a logo that has nothing but typography to represent it. Some logotypes are the Subway logo, Kool-aid, and Google.  In today’s society logos are seen everywhere, and symbols have become an extremely important element to our civilization.