Prehistoric visual communications
Black was made from charcoal and a range of warm tones, from light yellows through red-browns, were made from red and yellow iron oxides. This palette of pigments was mixed with fat as a medium. Images of animals were drawn and painted upon the walls of these former subterranean water channels occupied as a refuge by prehistoric men and women. The pigment is smeared onto the walls with a finger, or a brush was fabricated from bristles or reeds. It was the dawning of visual communications as these early pictures were made for survival and for utilitarian and ritualistic purposes.
Abstract geometric signs such as dots, squares and other configurations, are intermingled with the animals in many cave paintings. The animals painted in the caves are pictographs. These are elementary pictures or sketches that represent the things depicted.
Petroglyphs are carved or scratched signs or simple figures on rock. Many of them are pictographs and some may be ideographs, or ideographs, or symbols to represent ideas or concepts. In creating prehistoric drawings, a high level of observation and memory is evidenced. The early pictographs evolved in two ways, first they were the beginning of pictorial art, meaning that the objects and events of the world were recorded with increasing fidelity and exactitude as the centuries passed. Secondly, they formed the basis of writing. The images ultimately became symbols for spoken-language sounds.
The Paleolithic artist developed a tendency toward simplification and stylization. Figures became increasingly abbreviated and were expressed with a minimum number of lines. Some petroglyphs and pictographs had been reduced to the point of almost resembling letters.
Abstract geometric signs such as dots, squares and other configurations, are intermingled with the animals in many cave paintings. The animals painted in the caves are pictographs. These are elementary pictures or sketches that represent the things depicted.
Petroglyphs are carved or scratched signs or simple figures on rock. Many of them are pictographs and some may be ideographs, or ideographs, or symbols to represent ideas or concepts. In creating prehistoric drawings, a high level of observation and memory is evidenced. The early pictographs evolved in two ways, first they were the beginning of pictorial art, meaning that the objects and events of the world were recorded with increasing fidelity and exactitude as the centuries passed. Secondly, they formed the basis of writing. The images ultimately became symbols for spoken-language sounds.
The Paleolithic artist developed a tendency toward simplification and stylization. Figures became increasingly abbreviated and were expressed with a minimum number of lines. Some petroglyphs and pictographs had been reduced to the point of almost resembling letters.
 |
| Prehistoric visual communications |
The earliest writing
Small clay tags were made that identified the contents with a pictograph and the amount with an elementary decimal numbering system based on ten human fingers.
The earliest written records are tablets that apparently list commodities by pictographic drawings of objects accompanied by numerals and personal names inscribed in orderly columns. An abundance of clay in Sumer made it the logical material for record keeping, and a reed stylus sharpened to a point was used to draw the fine, curved lines of the early pictographs. The clay mud table was held in the left hand and the pictographs were scratched in the surface with the wooden stylus. Beginning of the top right corner of the tablet, the lines were written in careful vertical columns.
Writing was structured on a grid of horizontal and vertical spatial divisions. Sometimes the scribe would smear the writing as his hand moved across the tablet.Around 2800 BC scribes turned the pictographs on their sides and began to write in horizontal rows, from left to right and top to bottom. This made writing easier and it made the pictographs less literal. 300 years later, writing speed was increased by replacing the sharp-pointed stylus with a triangular-tipped one. This stylus was pushed into the clay instead of being dragged through it.
When picture-symbols represented animate and inanimate objects, signs became ideographs and began to represent abstract ideas. The symbol for sun began to represent ideas such as day and light. Picture symbols began to represent the sounds of the objects depicted instead of the objects themselves.
Writing also fostered a sense of history as tablets chronicled with meticulous exactitude the events that occurred during the reign of each monarch. Writing enabled society to stabilize itself under the rule of law. Written in a precise style, harsh penalties were expressed with clarity and brevity.
The earliest written records are tablets that apparently list commodities by pictographic drawings of objects accompanied by numerals and personal names inscribed in orderly columns. An abundance of clay in Sumer made it the logical material for record keeping, and a reed stylus sharpened to a point was used to draw the fine, curved lines of the early pictographs. The clay mud table was held in the left hand and the pictographs were scratched in the surface with the wooden stylus. Beginning of the top right corner of the tablet, the lines were written in careful vertical columns.
Writing was structured on a grid of horizontal and vertical spatial divisions. Sometimes the scribe would smear the writing as his hand moved across the tablet.Around 2800 BC scribes turned the pictographs on their sides and began to write in horizontal rows, from left to right and top to bottom. This made writing easier and it made the pictographs less literal. 300 years later, writing speed was increased by replacing the sharp-pointed stylus with a triangular-tipped one. This stylus was pushed into the clay instead of being dragged through it.
When picture-symbols represented animate and inanimate objects, signs became ideographs and began to represent abstract ideas. The symbol for sun began to represent ideas such as day and light. Picture symbols began to represent the sounds of the objects depicted instead of the objects themselves.
Writing also fostered a sense of history as tablets chronicled with meticulous exactitude the events that occurred during the reign of each monarch. Writing enabled society to stabilize itself under the rule of law. Written in a precise style, harsh penalties were expressed with clarity and brevity.
 |
| Earliest Writing |
Mesopotamian visual identification
The image carved into the round stone appeared on the tablet as a raised flat design and it was virtually impossible to duplicate or counterfeit. The Egyptians evolved a complex writing based on pictographs and the Phoenicians replaced the formidable complexity of cuneiform with simple phonetic signs.
 |
| Mesopotamian visual communication |
Egyptian hieroglyphs
The Egyptians retained their picture-writing system, known as the hieroglyphics. The last people to use this language system were Egyptian temple priests.Hieroglyphics consisted of pictograms that depicted objects or beings. They were combined to designate actual ideas, phonograms denoting sounds and determinatives identifying categories. The Egyptian language contained so many homonyms determinatives were used after these words to ensure that the reader correctly interpreted them.
Ancient Egypt clearly represents the early stages of Western civilization as we know it today. The ancient Egyptians had an extraordinary sense of design and were sensitive to the decorative and textural qualities of their hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were carved into stone as raised images or incised relief and color was often applied. The design flexibility of hieroglyphics was greatly increased by the choice of writing direction. The lines could be written horizontally or vertically so the designer of an artifact or manuscript had four choices. These are left to right horizontally, left to right vertically, right to left horizontally and right to left vertically.
Ancient Egypt clearly represents the early stages of Western civilization as we know it today. The ancient Egyptians had an extraordinary sense of design and were sensitive to the decorative and textural qualities of their hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were carved into stone as raised images or incised relief and color was often applied. The design flexibility of hieroglyphics was greatly increased by the choice of writing direction. The lines could be written horizontally or vertically so the designer of an artifact or manuscript had four choices. These are left to right horizontally, left to right vertically, right to left horizontally and right to left vertically.
 |
| Egyptian hieroglyphs |
Papyrus and writing
It is a paperlike substrate for manuscripts and was a major step forward in Egyptian visual communications. The wooden palette used by the scribe was a trademark identifying the carrier as being able to read and write. With a gum solution as a binder, carbon was used to make black ink and ground red ocher to make red ink. The earliest hieratic script differed from the hieroglyphs only in that the use of a rush pen, instead of a pointed brush, produced more abstract characters with a terse, angular quality. Hieratic and demotic scripts supplemented rather than supplanted hieroglyphs which continued in use for religious and inscriptional purposes.
 |
| Papyrus and writing |
The first illustrated manuscripts
A consistent design format evolved for the illustrated Egyptian papyri. One or two horizontal bands, usually colored, ran across the top and bottom of the manuscript. Vertical columns of writing separated by ruled lines were written from right to left. Images were inserted adjacent to the text they illustrated. They often stood on the lower horizontal band, the columns of text hanging down from the top horizontal band. A sheet was sometimes divided into rectangular zones to separate text and images. The integration of text and image was aesthetically pleasing for the dense texture of the brush-drawn hieroglyphs contrasted splendidly with the illustration's open spaces and flat planes of color.
 |
| Egyptian papyri |
Egyptian visual identification
They used cylinder seals and proprietary marks on such items as pottery very early in their history. The flat underside, engraved with a hieroglyphic inscription was used as a seal. Ancient Egyptian culture survived for over three thousand years. Hieroglyphs, papyri and illustrated manuscripts are its visual communications legacy. These innovations triggered the development of the alphabet and graphic communications in Phoenicia and the Greco-Roman world.
 |
| Egyptian visual identification |
Bibliography
Anon, (2017). [online] Available at: http://file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/Interactive%20Media/Contextual%20Studies/Meggs-History-of-Graphic-Design.pdf [Accessed 24 Jan. 2017].
No comments:
Post a Comment