C.O.P Lecture 3: The History of Type - Production and Distribution (Part 1)

Lecture 3: The History of Type – Production and Distribution (Part 1)

-       “all that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another”

-       it cant just be something that the sender understands, but the receive has it understand it as well.

Type is what language looks like – it is a visualization of language. It has tone, pace, weight.

Typography:

-       the art and technique of printing with moveable type.

-       The composition of printed material from moveable type.

-       The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.

“the written word endures…the spoken word disappears” – Neil Postman, Amusing ourselves to death.

Logotypes – 7000BC

Type is speech made visible.

Development of language, how they expand and create other languages.

E.g. Europe – Alphabets in Europe: Greek, Greek + Latin, Latin, Latin + Cyrillic, Cyrillic, Georgian, Armenian.

3200 BCE(ish) – Mesopotamia –middle east. Occidental side (western).

Trade and Communication:

-       The rosetta stone – 196 BC (discovered 1799) – Egyptian, Demotic, Greek. – Represents those languages. – They were direct translations, gave us the opportunity to know how to translate languages.

The first true alphabet was the greek alphabet – pictograms.

We can understand something even if it isn’t spelt out correctly – we interpret what letters are saying without it actually saying it.

Use the recognition of shapes and piece them together to understand what it is.

Origins of type:

-       language doing one thing, production doing another.

1870 – William Foster:

-       Elementary education act – all children ages of 5-12 in England and Wales must go to school.

-       Learning to read

Production methods changed – things were still written but mass production needed something quicker – print.

Writing became a hobby instead of necessity.

Anything informative was printed.

1919 – 1933 - Walter Gropius – Bauhaus. – Industrialization – design as a discipline.

-       First point in time typography was born.

-       Type was a language that had a heritage but was also shaping the future.

“since typography is a communication method that utilizes a gathering of related subjects and methodologies that includes sociology, linguistics, psychology, aesthetics and so much more”

We navigate our whole lives using words – change and improve the words and I believe that we can change and improve life.

C.O.P Lecture 2: History of the Image.

A 20,000 year non-linear history of the image.

• Lascaux caves, France – pre-civilisation image meaning are unknown. Mystery (spectral images).
• Attempt to communicate with the world.
• Cultural Imperialism
• Continuity between ancient and contemporary artists.
• “It’s like the existence of something isn’t real unless it is documented digitally.”
• Institutions are vital for visual communication – Tells us how to feel about things.
• Gallenes help us behave – like going to old church
• Alter of culture
• Image making can create glamour and importance. – Mona Lisa
• Is an image meaningful because of its characteristics, or because people are lining up to see it?
• Do institutions create importance on images?
• Capitalist society – Exiting through the gift shop.
• Relationship between authority, power and money.
• Banksy’s work is free, but people will knock down walls and buildings to sell to galleries. – Defeats the point of his work?
• Abstract impressionism
• USSR –Socialist realism, one of the best eras to look at for Graphic Design.
• Photography is about presenting and preserving life – Images make things eternal.

C.O.P Lecture 1: Visual Literacy - The Language of Design.

Context of Practice –

Lecture 2: Visual Literacy – The language of design.

Graphic Design

• It’s our job to communicate
• We solve problems of communication through type, image and motion.
• Interested in words, language, message, and meaning.
• We need to be able to effectively communicate ideas, concepts and content to different audiences in a range of contexts.

Visual Communication

• Process of sending and receiving messages using type and images.
• Based on a level of shared understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects.
• Affected by audience, context and media and method of distribution.

Visual Literacy

• Ability to construct meaning from visual images and type.
• Interpreting images of the present, past and future, and a range of cultures.
• Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience.

Visual Literacy is the ability to:

• Interpret
• Negotiate
• Make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, based on the idea that pictures can be read.

Visual communication is made up of presentational symbols whose meaning results from their existence in particular contexts.

…The conventions of visual communication are a combination of universal and cultural symbols.

We already have a large vocabulary of symbols on a complex level. We can understand so much by one simple symbol.

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that will stand for another.

Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between:

• Visual Syntax
• Visual Semantics

Visual Syntax:

• The syntax of an image refers to the pictorial structure and visual organisation of elements.
• Represents the basic building blocks of an image that affects the way we ‘read’ it.
• E.g. framing, format, scale, motion, rhythm, direction, mark, tone etc.

Visual Semantics:

• The semantics of an image refers way an image fits into cultural process of cultural process of communication.
• Relationship between form and meaning.
• These elements include: cultural references, social ideals, religious beliefs, political ideas, historical structures etc.

Semiotics:

• Study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy metaphor, symbolism, signification and communication.
• Closely related to the field of linguistics – structure and meaning of language.
• Also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy.
• E.g. Symbol, sign, signifier, metaphor, metonym, synecdoche.

Symbol – Logo

Sign – Identity

Signifier – Brand

Visual Synecdoche:

• When a part is used to represent the whole or visa versa.
• Main subject substituted for something that is inherently connected to it.
• It only works if the substitution is universally recognized.

Visual Metonym:

• Symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning.
• Associating the image and the intended subject.
• Unlike a visual synecdoche, the two images bear a close relationship, but are not intrinsically linked.

Visual Metaphor:

• Used to transfer the meaning from one image to another.
• Although the images may have no close relationship, a metaphor conveys an impression about something unfamiliar comparing or associating it with something familiar.
• “Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.” – Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – Bruce Mau.