Week 2: Chapter 1-Chapter 4

Chapter 1: The Invention of Writing

This book literally starts from the beginning of time.  It’s really interesting to think about a world where communication through words does not exist.  Early humans started drawing images on the wall of a cave as a form of communication.  In time, these drawings evolved into symbols, which became the basis of the alphabet we all know now.  The invention of writing changed everything.  Before writing, spoken words were lost and history was not recorded.  When writing was invented, humans were able to communicate with each other and preserve their knowledge.

Being a scribe never seemed interesting to me until this assignment, yet scribes are basically responsible for all of the historical knowledge and information we have today since they were the ones who recorded all of it.  Their job was taken very seriously.  They would study every day from sun up to sun down learning to read and write.  They wrote books, kept track of city records, kept track of historical records and even kept track of the business of royalty.  Scribes would carry with them a wooden palette which identified them as a person who could read and write.  They developed tools to use for writing.   They were held in a very high regard, and often got opportunities that others did not. 

In ancient Egypt, as a scribe you had to be educated in writing and arithmetic.  They supervised building construction, documented historical events and recorded many stories from that time period that still exist today.  Ancient Egyptians considered scribes royalty and they were exempt from paying taxes.  Egyptian scribes used pictures and symbols to represent the sounds you would use in spoken words.  They were writing about life, recording history through symbols.   Here’s an interesting fact; the ankh was originally a symbol created for a sandal strap, but phonetically it was similar to other sounds and became known as a symbol for life and immortality, and is considered sacred.  Talk about the journey of a lifetime for a symbol!

   

Early libraries started to be organized together with tablets full of knowledge in them.  Literature started to form.  Laws of society were recorded.  Measurements and weights were standardized.  The foundation of all our knowledge about life as we know it was being built.  Visual identification became necessary, and people started to develop their marks or signatures.  They would stamp them on the clay pots they made, on their cattle or other objects to show ownership or craftsmanship.  Cutters started developing cylindrical stamps for people to use as their mark.  This is thought of as the early beginnings of printing and design.

Chapter 2: Alphabets

Reading about the evolution of our alphabet has been quite a journey.  I never imagined that in a class about Graphic Design that I would be learning about the alphabet, yet it now is apparent how important this piece of history is to our profession.  Again, something I have never given much thought to before this class.  So, I did some research and found out even more about why the alphabet is so important.  One huge reason is collation and organization. Alphabetical order is something we use every day; for example libraries, medical records and phone contacts.   The alphabet evolved and eventually became the 26 letters we use today from pictures to symbols, and sounds to letters .  The Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans all played a big part in its development.   

Chapter 3: The Asian Contribution

The part of this chapter that I found most interesting was the part about calligraphy.  There were many phases in the development of Chinese calligraphy.  It is considered the highest art form in China, and in fact is a medium for conveying feelings and emotional/spiritual states.  The thickness and heaviness of the strokes tells you what the writer was feeling, and what they want you to feel when you read it.  Calligraphy is written about in this book like it's a living and breathing being.  The way it is structured is broken down like physical anatomy: "Calligraphy was said to have bones (authority and size), meat (the proportion of the characters:, blood (the texture of the fluid ink), and muscle (spirit and vital force)."  This image shows the development of the character for Li (now the symbol for tripod):

The Chinese contributed a lot to writing, beyond calligraphy, which is saying a lot since their written language consists of more than forty-four thousand characters.  They invented paper.  They also invented printing.  They made it possible to transfer historical events that had been previously documented in stone onto paper, thus making them easily accessible.  They also invented paper money.  They updated the way we read from scrolls to books.  They developed movable type.  China was the first society in which common people saw and used printed images in their daily life.  

Chapter 4: Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts were originally pages that had gold leaf on them that reflected light, and we now know them as any of the decorated handwritten books from the Roman Empire.  A team of people created these books together, much the way a team of designers creates a product today.  The "scrittori" was the art director who was responsible for the overall design of the manuscript.  He would design the layout for the page and decide how it would look.  The "copisti" was the writer, and would spend many laborious days and nights hand writing each page.  The illuminator was the illustrator of the ornamental designs of the manuscript.  Together, this creative team designed illuminated manuscripts that allowed knowledge and ideas to be spread from region to region, and time period to time period. These manuscripts were a key part of our industry, and provided us with the earliest graphic forms, page layouts and techniques.

The Book of Kells is an amazing piece of history.  The designs are beautiful and intricate. They used many aspects of design in this book that we use today; borders, large first letters, and different font sizes. This picture shows how they used bigger letters with more illustration around them on words of particular significance:

Shortly after the time of the Book of Kells, Caroline minuscule was developed.  It was the beginning of the lower case alphabet that we use today.  Spaces were inserted between words and characters and reading became much easier.  The alphabet we use today with upper and lower case letters was coming into focus.

Sources: Meggs History of Graphic Design, Wikipedia