Chapter 11

Art Nouveau, meaning "new art", was an international design that involved all aspects of the art world, especially posters and magazines as advertisements. The characteristic quality of art nouveau was very organic, fluid lines from the feminine form and plants. An art form called ukiyo-e made an impact on the beginnings of the art nouveau style. This screen printed style was the last phase of the traditional art in Japan and quickly moved on to woodblock print. European artist drew their inspirations from this style. Two designers in France, Jules Cheret and Eugene Grasset, were important in the transition between this art nouveau style and the Victorian style. Cheret became a popular poster designer and rose to fame in Paris with the actress Sarah Bernhardt when he began to design posters for her theater shows. He enjoyed using bright primary colors with one or more central figure. The women in his posters, Cherettes, were inspiration for many women and gave them new social freedoms. Grasset was Cheret's only real competition with his watercolor designs in his "coloring-book style". Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Grasset and became another big name in France with his new dymanic design. Alphonse Mucha was also a big name who became famous with his Bernhardt posters and his female figures often portrayed in his works. Aubrey Beardsley was popular in England for about five years with his bold pen line and white and black design. Charles Ricketts followed with a Celtic design and flat, stylized figures that he drew with minimal lines and flat shapes. The art nouveau style moved on to America where it grew with Louis Rhead and Will Bradley, who mostly designed magazine covers and layouts. Jugendstil was the name for the art nouveau movement through Germany with strong influences from France and Britain. Peter Behrens was known through this time for his large woodblock prints for the publication "Jungend" and his experimentation with ornaments and vingnettes in other publications.
I love the work by Cheret with his bright colors and only a few central figures in his poster designs. I also enjoy the impact that he had on the female society at the time. He got rid of stereotypes and showed that women could enjoy what they pleased without looking like a prude or overly sexual.
Did the European style of the art nouveau movement take anything more from the ukiyo-e style than the organic lines and shapes?

Friday, February 27

We had our first styles presentation in class today about the Victorian Era. It was named after the queen of Britain, Queen Victoria and characterized by their intricate and detailed typefaces that had a kind of romantic quality about them. The Victorian Era had a youthful and niave style with their romantic designs or children and puppies and they were also all about socially appropriate behavior and religious morality. The Chinese, Spanish and Islamic cultures influenced their designs a lot as well with the colors and patterns used. The poster design of the time was also important because they used many variations in the styles of typefaces and sizes, using up all the space on the poster and leaving very little or no white space. I like the Victorian style of fancy and romantic typefaces because of the craftsmanship and work that went into designing them and they're asthetically pleasing to me. We also saw a video that showed an old fashioned printing press that was still in use. The people running the press made their own letter forms, designed the pages and put them together by hand. We saw a similar printing press in Tennessee that was a hand-press and they printed posters by putting together the letters and sometimes making new images. I really found those videos interesting and I'm glad I saw them because I really like the idea of the hand-printed designs that those people did and I love that some people out there still care about the style and are putting efforts into keeping it alive in the digital age.
How much does a hand printed poster or something like an invitation go for?

Week 4 Image

This image is the cover of a "Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends" DVD that I own. I wanted to focus on the text that says "Season" in the top right corner of the image. I tried to crop it, but I had problems loading that image, so bear with me. I chose this example of text because it reminded me of the kinds of text that were starting to appear during the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Era. It's got some fancy detailing, shadowing and decoration that draws your attention, kind of like the elaborate typefaces they might have used in advertisments or product labels. The whole word also starts to curve, which I noticed that often occured on package designs. I'm sorry I couldn't make it much bigger so you could see the details, but I feel that they are what makes this example a modern use of the typefaces that were popular during the Victorian Era.

Chapter 10

The Arts and Crafts movement was lead by William Morris who wanted products to have a purpose, be true to the materials and methods of production, and for there to be individual expression from the designer and the worker. This movement was also a revival of many things, such as the book and its design and older typefaces. John Ruskin was also a big part in how the Arts and Crafts movement developed. He encouraged the union of art and labor and felt that beautiful things were valuable and useful because they were. Ruskin also was involved in the social justices like education, improved housing, and retirement benefits. William Morris embraced Ruskin's theories and ideas and thus became a very important figure in design. He was a writer who had plans to join the church, but instead became an artist and established Morris and Co., which was an art-decorating firm. In 1888 Morris made the decision to start designing typefaces. His first typeface was named "Golden", which was based on Nicolas Jenson's Venetian roman faces. Morris began a press in 1890 called Kelmscott Press that committed itself to the incunabula design, woodblocks and all. Incunabula Gothic types were also brought back wider, increased size contrasts and rounder curves. Morris also designed a smaller version of Troy named Chaucer that sparked an interest in Jenson and Gothic styles. I feel that William Morris is the most interesting and important person in the readings since he was so influential to the time and he really cared about what he did. He wanted to bring back the beauty of functional works and craft, and I can appreciate that. I'm curious to know, though, why he chose Incunabula styles to bring back?

Wednesday, February 25

In class we started discussion about the Industrial Revolution. We talked about the style of the typefaces that were coming out and the new inventions, like the steam engine and how it influenced the new steam printing press. Wood type was introduced because of how much easier it was to use and linotype was discovered. The typefaces that were introduced at this time were fancier and much bigger. They had more details and were dramatically different than past faces to fit the growing trend of posters to advertise. Photography was also a major discussion point of the class period. We talked mostly about the development and how pictures were taken. I felt that this was the most interesting part, especially with the old cameras we got to look at and touch. It started to help me understand the process a little more to physically see what they used then.
How did the people who were helping in the development of photography know what chemicals to use when they did washes and things like that?

Chapter 9

The Industrial Revolution brought about many changes to graphic design as well as new inventions. It also created a need for new typefaces, which typefounders filled. Robert Thorne designed the fat faces category of type, which is a roman face with an increase in the contrast and weight with thick, heavy strokes. Vincent Figgins came out with the antiques with even weighted letters, short ascenders and descenders, and rectangular serifs. He also produced the first version of Tuscan-style letters, characterized by extended and curved serifs and was varied throughout the nineteenth century. The sans-serif type also appeared during this time by William Caslon the fourth. One invention of the Industrial Revolution was wood-type. Problems with metal-type lead to this cheaper alternative by Darius Wells. This allowed new typefaces to be made so easily that customers of a printer could create any kind of lettering they wanted. Innovations of the printing press made great strides too. Friedrich Koenig developed a press that ran on steam and produced 400 sheets of print per hour and worked with a roller that inked the type instead of the hand-inking balls. Curved stereotype plates increased printing speeds even more and soon machine-set typography and machine made paper brought about mass communication. The invention of photography opened up even more doors for graphic design. Joseph Niepce is credited with producing the first photographic image by putting a pewter plate in a camera obscura. He continued to experiment with other light-sensitive materials with Louis Jacques Daguerre who had perfected a process to produce his daguerreotype prints. William Henry Fox Talbot was doing something similar in England with his photograms, which are images made by manipulating objects with light hitting photogenic paper. During the 1860's photography was being applied to prints by wood engravings and then reproduced with a half-tone screen. Photography developed into motion picture photography due to Eadweard Muybridge's innovations. It's basically changing light going through several photographs in a row and joined by the human eye.
I think it's fascinating to learn how photography developed. It's something I think we take for granted today that really made a big difference in the way information and ideas travled from person to person. To be able to capture a moment or object exactly is a great concept and to see how someone thought that it might be "charming" to recreate them onto paper without a pencil or printing press.

Week 3 Image

This is an image of a poster advertising the release of the movie "Big Fish". I found this online at www.impawards.com since I didn't have the DVD. We only touched on William Blake and his work briefly during class on Wednesday, but I thought of the "Big Fish" movie cover right away. William Blake incorporated his type into his images and this is what the title is doing on the poster by having branches coming out of the letters like they were trees. It is also a kind of modern day broadside. I like the design because it is kind of simple, a landscape with a path and a man walking into the distance with the title forming trees. I also like the font of the title because it is whimsical, along with the fact that they are parts of trees, and it makes you think about what the movie is about. The placement of the title is nice since it makes you notice it right away and the rest of the information is smaller, making it clear that it is less important than the title, but placed so you notice it as well.

Wednesday, February 18

In class today, we reviewed the Reniassance a little bit and discussed the main typeface designers of the eighteenth century, le Juene, Caslon, Baskerville, Didot, and Bodoni. Each had a typeface that made them well known. Le Juene and Caslon made a typeface that was considered Old Style since the type had a handwritten look and bracketed serifs. Baskerville's Transitional style typeface had straight serifs and a contrast in the thickness of the letters. Didot and Bodoni made Modern fonts that were similar to Baskerville's, but with more contrast in the thin and thick parts of the letters as well as a more geometric design. We also discussed the rococo style with it's curvy style and intricate details and briefly went over informative graphics and William Blake, whom we didn't read about. His illuminated prints incorporated the letter forms into the pictures.
I felt that it was important and helpful going through the details of each of the fonts to be able to differentiate them. It helps me to understand the design of the times and match the typeface with the name of the designer.
Did anyone else start doing the same sort of thing with their type as William Blake did when his prints came out?

Chapter 8

Chapter eight talked about the graphic design of the eighteenth century. Romain du Roi was the new typeface at the start of the century made specifically for the King and his printing press. Pierre Simon Fournier le Jeune based his own typeface off of the royal font and pioneered standardization typeface proportions during the rococo era, which is named for the French art and architecture of the time. War and government control over printing had put a halt to most graphic innovation until William Caslon took up type design. He designed an Arabic font followed by Caslon Old Style with italic. His fonts were used in the American colonies and was even used in the Declaration of Independence. John Baskerville was also a popular type designer. He was involved in the printing process and a manufacturer before creating type designs that were wider than older types, but were elegant and light. He also chose not to include the intricatly decorated initials in his printing for a pure typographic print. Baskerville became known for his handmade paper that was smooth and glossy because of the way he hot-pressed the paper. Information graphics were developed with the help of philosopher and mathemetician, Rene Descartes. He came up with the Cartesian grid and coordinates for line graphs that William Playfair worked more with. Playfair is also responsible for the modern pie chart. Giabattista Bodoni and Francois-Ambroise Didot were two more printers that were big names. Bodoni took Fournier le Jeune's typeface and evolved it into the modern style. He also redesigned the roman letterforms, making the serifs more delicate and thin. Didot brought out a paper similar to that of Baskerville's and the maigre and gras type styles that are comparable to our condensed and expanded type styles.
I found the section about Informational graphics the most interesting since I used to be a total math nerd and enjoyed hearing how Descartes had an influence on graphic design in some way. I also like hearing that graphics are always pretty and sometimes need to display important information, like a pie chart or line graph.
What does "japanned ware" mean?

Monday, February 16

In class today, we discussed printing during the Reniassance, Albrecht Durer and Martin Luther. Albrecht was the man responsible for bringing the Reniassance to Germany. He had traveled to Venice and felt that their craftsmanship was better, so he wrote a book for the Germans about how to design on a grid. Martin Luther split from the Catholic church and pointed out their faults, inspiring some graphics of Christ and the Pope and the different Christian religions, such as Lutheranism. The start of our discussion of the Reniassance today was on the "reniassance man", who is good at everything he does. We highlighted Tory, Manutius, and Ratdolt and discussed what made them "reniassance men". Tory seemed to have his hand in almost everything and started the use of things like apostrophes in his text, while Manutius was basically the man with the money that funded a lot of what he got credit for and Ratdolt was most famous for having a complete title page and the woodblock border. I feel that this discussion of each man and his works was helpful because I had difficulty reading about them and got confused. Why didn't Griffo get more of the credit for his works in developing italics, among other things, instead of Manutius?

Chapters 6 and 7

We were only required to go over certain parts of Chapter six, which discussed printing in Germany. From the invention of typography by Gutenberg until the end of the fifteenth century, the German writers called their books incunabula, which is Latin for "cradle". Broadsides were also popular during this time. They were single-leaf pages that were only printed on one side and evolved into posters, advertisements, pamphlets and newspapers. Printing was spreading very quickly and led to overproduction and the end of many printing firms. Only ten out of over one hundred firms survived the fifteenth century. Albrecht Durer was a printer in German and Latin and illustrated his book The Apocalypse with a new graphic expressivness that got him famous throughout Europe. He also wrote a book on the Italian text and printing and worked out a text using a square and a one-to-ten ration of the heavy stroke width to height. Martin Luther also was part of the graphic expressions, inspiring scenes of Christs life because of his work with the Catholic church and his theses.
Chapter seven talked about graphic design during the Renaissance, meaning the period of revival and rebirth of the arts and sciences. Floral designs and decorations were popular during this time, especially in the manuscript. Erhard Ratold took steps to bring those designs into the printing process as well as the text, to print the entire book. He had become the first to have a book with a completed title page and used a three-sided woodcut border as a kind of trademark of his works. A great harmony of typography and illustration was met in The Dream of Poliphilus printed by Aldus Manutius. New fonts were designed based on the Roman inscriptions as wall as the pocket book. Church and state battled with censorship, making it difficult for scholar-printers. Two major designers of France became popular for their works, Geoffry Tory and Claude Garamond. Tory was famous for his series of initials set in black squares with meticulate designs and ornamentations perfect for the Roman type by Garamond, who is credited with the evolution of the roman typeface.
I found the problem with printing during the fifteeth century interesting. It spread so fast that it wound up becoming too much and printers had to stop. I also like how broadsides became posters and advertisements or a pamphlet, from folding it differently, just from a single sided print of a book.

Friday, February 13

In class on Friday we had a guest, Andrew Lloyd Goodman, who had given a presentation the same day before our class. He showed us some more video art made on After-effects and participated in our class discussion. We talked over the evolution of movable type from the Chinese to printing with Gutenberg. We also discussed the styles of illuminated scripts from chapter four. I enjoyed having Mr. Goodman in class with us and I found it interesting to have a second voice in the lecture. It made the class time go by much faster and we touched on topics that probably wouldn't have been brought up, making it an interesting class period for sure.
Are there any other classes offered, besides the Images in Motion class, that teaches After-effects? After the presentation by Mr. Goodman and what he showed us in class, I'm a little interested in learning how to use it.

Week 2 Image

This image is an article from a back issue of Glamour magazine about inspirational women. I was just flipping through and the design of the page caught my eye. The bright red letter "K" made me think of the lettering they used in the illuminated manuscripts called diminuendo, where the words started out huge and gradually got smaller. I think it's a kind of modern twist on the style, even if it's not as dramatic. I kind of wish that it was a little more dramatic like the actual design and that the bold letters at the start of the article were a different font, but I think it's effective and eyecatching. The bright color and fancy font of the "K" bring your eye to the beginning of the article, which I feel is what the designers wanted. I also felt that the column of writing surrounded by an image was slightly similar to the style of the illuminated manuscripts, also not as dramatic and elaborate, but it highlights the text.

Chapter 5

Chapter five was all about the progression of typography in Europe and a lot about Johann Guntenberg, who is responsible for the development of the systems needed to print a typographic book. Typography is the printing of materials with independent, movable and reusable pieces of metal or wood with a raised letterform on each piece. Woodblock printing was the first kind to reach Europe from China. Playing cards were popular and devotional prints of saints became the first block printings with communicational functions, which soon became block books with religious writings and pictures that gradually left the form while literacy increased. Some were colored by hand or stencils and sometimes had tinsel, incrustations, or flocking to add luminosity to the picture. Johann Gutenberg started out as an apprentice to a goldsmith where he learned the techiniques required to make the movable type he created. His choice of letterform was a compact, square textura style and he used capital and small letters, numbers and ligatures in his printing. Each form was punched into a copper or brass matrix by steel for his type mold. He also created his own alloy of lead, tin and antimony for the type so that it would not expand and contract when heated and cooled, as well as his own linseed oil ink. His biggest project was the printing of the Bible, the first typographic book. Others that followed were a Latin psalter that displayed elaborate, two-colored initials and was the first book to have a printer's trademark, imprint and printed date of publication and a second had a small type style that conserved space as well as increased the amount of text per page. Copperplate engraving was developed around the same time as movable type by the Master of the Playing Cards, who designed a set of playing cards as his finest works. His skill showed that he had already mastered engraving and wasn't trying to perfect something new. There is some speculation as to whether or not Gutenberg also had something to do with engravings.
I found the way they added decoration to the block books was intersting. They would print with paste sprinkeled with bits of metal, colored quartz crystals, or powered wool to add interest to pictures. It would almost be like a work of art or it reminds me of those touch and feel books with different textures.
When Gutenberg printed the Bible did he copy one directly that was already written (word for word) and did he have pictures?

Wednesday, February 11

In class today we did practice quizzes online for both chapters three and four of our readings. I realized that I have trouble remebering names of people or particular manuscripts, but I'm fine when it comes to styles of type and illustrations. We then talked about the invention of paper and the progression of Chinese calligraphy from the shell-and-bone style to regular. Paper was a great invention of the time because it was cheaper and easier to use and helped to make writing and reading more widespread. Before the end of class we were told about a project coming up that we will have to present and write a paper about a style of design.
I think that the most useful thing about class today was the quizzes. Because of the type of questions they were asking, I feel that I will try and look at the details of the chapters more carefully, such as dates and names.
We were also told that in past classes they were able to make their own paper. What goes into the process of making our own paper?

Chapter 4

Chapter four talked about illuminated manuscripts of the Greeks and Romans, the Celts, the Spanish, Judiac and Islamic, and some designs of the Gothic, Romanesque and medieval periods. Illuminated manuscripts got their name because the illustrations were often decorated in gold leaf that made them seem illuminated. The Greeks and Romans designed the manuscripts to have the writing in a single wide column per page, in rustic capitals, with the illustrations next to the writings, the same width. Two new letter styles were formed in the search for something easier called uncial and half-uncials. The letters were rounded, eliminating strokes. A common pattern among manuscripts was the border around the pictures. The Celts often used interlacing, which was the elaborate overlapping of ribbon, and lacertines, which were interlaces created by animal forms. A new design in the letters also became known as diminuendo, with the large initials, and spaces between words for easier reading were introduced. After a period of struggle with the arts, a revival came with King Charlemagne and an attempt at the standardization of page layouts and writing styles as well as a successful reformation of the alphabet. The Spanish manuscripts were also very decorative, but had some Islamic design influences in their Christian manuscripts with intense color and flat shapes. Christian manuscripts during the Romanesque into the Gothic periods emphasised linear illustrations and the distortion of figures to meld with the rest of the page and then segmented illustrations with elaborate frames and borders. Religious illuminated manuscripts were also the finest in Jewish culture, called Haggadot. They are decorated with beautiful Hebrew calligraphy, gold initials on blue plaques, with pictures supporting the words, which were more important. The Qur'an is another religious reading that has beautiful manuscript design. At first only the calligraphy was ornate, then the framing became more and more elaborate with intricacies and geometric shapes.
I thought that it was interesting to know how many people it took to make an illuminated manuscript. It's almost exactly like what writing a book or other publication with pictures would be like. There is an editor who directs the whole project, there's someone who writes the letters and decided where the art would go, and finally there's the illuminator and later on a printer.
Why, if the text was so carefully lettered in the Celtic manuscripts, were there misspellings?

Chapter 3

Chapter three discussed what the Chinese contributed to the writing world. Chinese calligraphy is a writing system that started to develop around 1800 B.C. and is a language that isn't alphabetical, but visual, like hieroglyphics. Each character represents a whole word or idea, instead of a letter. Chiaku-wen is the earliest known form of Chinese writing and was written on the bones of large animals for the purpose of divination. Chin-wen is what they called inscriptions on bronze objects, which was useful for treaties, codes and contracts. Chen-shu, or regular style, is what is in use today. It is a true art in that every aspect of each character is designed by the writer, like the thickness of the lines and the black vs. white space relationship. The Chinese are also responsible for the development of paper. A man named Ts'ai Lun is believed to be the inventor. It was much cheaper than silk and lighter than the slats of bamboo previously used. Printing is another advance come upon by the Chinese. The first form was relief printing where the image is raised. It's then inked and paper is rubbed over it to transfer the ink. Paper money was first made this way making China the first culture that allowed ordinary people have contact with printed images. Pi Sheng, an alchemist, developed movable type using 3-D calligraphy forms in clay, which eventually were made out of bronze instead.
I found it interesting that calligraphy was personified the way it was and how the writer is given the freedom to determine certain things about the characters. Calligraphy is beautiful and there are so many characters, I have respect for anyone who can do it well enough to interpret things like the thickness of the lines and spaces as an artist would.
Why do the Chinese use the calligrapy instead of an alphabet?

Monday, February 9

We discussed in class early alphabets and how they were important to civilizations, such as allowing information to travel faster and other people being able to read and learn how to write. Alphabets were easier to work with since there were fewer characters to remember and they were more simplistic. We also pointed out differences in the styles of the letters between different cultures, like the Greeks and Romans. Both were geometric based forms, but the Romans had the serif. We also talked about how Hangul was formed, by the shapes the tongue makes in the mouth when forming the words, and that it was to combine the language and script the Koreans were using. I feel that the most useful thing I learned today was looking at the letter forms and really seeing the differences in the details, which matter. I felt that it was interesting that there were similarities between the ways the Romans and Greeks wrote their alphabet, but the difference was in the details.
After talking about different substrates, or what the letters were written on, I wondered why they chose baby animals, or just animals in general, to make their parchment out of?

Week 1 Image

This image is a pictograph of the instructions for the use of a hand-dryer that I found in a bathroom. If you want your hands dried after washing them, it shows that you need to push the button and warm air will dry your hands. This past week we've been discussing and reading about hieroglyphics, pictographs, and the early forms of communication and these instructions are similar to them. On the first day we say pictures of cave drawings that were essentially instructions for hunting. They showed where to put your spear to take down a certain animal. These instructions made me think of those cave drawings, only they are just showing you where to put your hands to dry them. I chose this image because they reminded me of those drawings and also just the fact that it's something that is used often. As far as the design goes, it isn't really attractive, but I feel that it gets the idea across that pushing the button will turn on the dryer and the air coming out will be warm by the red waves coming down on the hands. It's not pretty, but it's functional.

Chapter 2

Chapter two of our text talked about early forms of alphabets, which are sets of visual symbols or characters that represent the sounds of a spoken language. The North Semitic alphabet is believed to be where the idea of the alphabet originated. The Phoenicians developed their own scripts influenced by their business with the surrounding civilizations, creating Sui generis, symbols that didn't hold any pictorail meaning, Sinaitic script, an adaptation on the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Ras Shamra, which used cuneiformlike symbols and no vowels. The Aramaic alphabet is a major branch of the North Semitic script with twenty-two letters for consonants. It is the predecessor to modern Hebrew and Arabic, which are two commonly used scripts today. Both alphabets use the twenty-two letters from the North Semitic alphabet and developed other characters to include vowels. The North Semitic alphabet was also useful to the development of the Greek alphabet, who took five of the consonants and changed them to be vowels. The way the Greeks wrote the alphabet was structured and geometrical. All the characters were based on either a square, triangle, or circle and were written in a few different styles before finally being written left to right. The alphabet took on a role in the democracy of the Greek culture with voting, public services and signature seals. The Latin alphabet sprung from the Greek alphabet, giving us the twenty-six letters that are used in the English alphabet. The Romans also wrote in a structured, but stylized form with their attention to space and their use of the serif. Rome also began to use parchment instead of papyrus since it was cheaper and easier to write on and store.
I found the discussion of the Roman serif interesting since it wasn't really done on purpose that way, it was simply how it was done whether it was done while carving or by the flick of the brush during the writing. I also was interested to learn how much easier parchment was to deal with than the papyrus scrolls. I guess I never thought that the scrolls were that much of a problem to use.
After reading about the development of these different alphabets, I wonder how many people during those times could actually read the characters?

Chapter 1

Chapter One described how early man communicated their needs by painting pictures on their walls and how they changed from being detailed to a very simplified design over the centuries. As civilization grew, the needs to have a recording system to regulate a community also grew. Lables were made from clay and pictographs to represent the contents of a package and a decimal system based on the human hands to represent the quantity. Similar methods were used in recording many things needed to run a civilization, usually in a grid format written with a sharp pointed stylus, later replaced with a triangular tipped stylus that created a different style of writing. Most symbols used then were pictures that represented abstract ideas, but the pictures began to represent the sounds of the object instead as the need to express more and different things arose. Visual identification also became a need and was met with Mesopotamian cylinder seals, which could be rolled over a surface or stamped to claim ownership or identify the creator. Egyptian identification was derived from these people except they used carved scarab emblems. The Egyptians went through a similar pattern with their written communication. Their pictographs eventually evolved into hieroglyphics that were more simplistic in their design to write. They could be written from left to right, right to left, and horizontally or vertically. The Egyptians also developed something like paper to record on, called papyrus, made from the cyperus papyrus plant. On this, they became the first to combine pictures and words to communicate their messages.
I found the personal identification seals interesting. It's like an early logo, since these seals were used for identifying the creator of a product, or like a signature when proof was needed for the authorization of some sort of document. I also think these were interesting because the reading said that they were incapable of being forged because of the way they were designed.
Why did the design of the stylus used to write in the clay change and what exactly is cuneiform?

Wednesday, February 4

In our first class session of History of Graphic Design we discussed the first methods of communication by the human race. We learned that cave drawings and paintings was a big part in how people communicated their ideas, thoughts, and needs, like hunting for example. We also did an activity to see the challenges behind communication between others without using any known language, only clay images. I feel that the experience of trying to create a message out of clay, without numbers or letters, with the intention of others understanding the meaning and trying to understand what other people were trying to say with their clay figures was the most important thing I obtained from the class session. It's not easy to communicate without using language and I think it's important that we understand that. After seeing the pictures that were first used, I wonder when humans first started to use language, of any kind, and when we first started to write. What did our first letters look like? What kind of language did we speak?