What caught my attention from the podcast about Joseph Churchwood was the subject of visual communication, and how the alphabet came about. Clearly, Churchwood is a master at creating typography which is used by the common man to use to communicate anything, and everything. My interest lay in the history of this visual communication, how did it come about? This lead me on a journey way back to ancient history where the first form of visual communication was recorded.
I found this video which is very informative about the very first recorded visual communication and how it evolved from symbols communicating concepts, to signs communicating sounds.
I learned that the first visual symbols were created by the Egyptians in about 3000BC. They divided the world into atomic units which were expressed through symbols and they then arranged these symbols to create messages.
It is important to know that the Egyptians had two types of signs; word signs which were symbols for a single meaningful concept, and sound signs which a signs for chunks of sound.
This is important because as time went on, signs kept being created but they were sound signs, not word signs. This was a much more efficient way of writing. In 1700BC inscriptions were found in Sinai where the people had created signs for consonants only, not for entire words. This was a writing revolution. This theory of consonant symbols was applied to the Phonecian alphabet in 1000BC, and the amazing thing about it was it could be fitted to other diverse tongues.
This Phonecian alphabet is the source for our Roman and Greek alphabets that we know today. Alphabets amazing way of communicating and storing information. You can read more about the Greek alphabet here.
Reference Link:
Date Found: April 3
Writers involved:
Ali McMillan
Cameron Murray
Lawrence Lo
I think its worth mentioning Chinese characters here as I think its one of the most interesting 'alphabets'. The Chinese have well over 50,000 characters in there alphabet many of them never being used by the average citizen. Each character is treated as an individual, changing in what ever you put that character in. The weakness of the Chinese characters is sometimes it is very difficult to explain something because every character is an individual.
ReplyDeleteHow the Chinese characters came about, no one is sure. In the legends of Chinese it says during the reign of the Yellow Emperor, some 4600 years ago, invented the Chinese characters. Calligraphy came with invention of the characters as the Chinese people found a beautiful way to write and began to appreciate the beauty.
The chinese characters by themselves really are beautiful, the weight of the lines and how each one is put together I think is very expressive. Traditional ways of writing look amazing and require a lot of skill to master.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chcl/hd_chcl.htm
by Dawn Delbanco, Columbia University
http://www.art-virtue.com/history/
great site for those who want to find out more.