History of Visual Communication

Introduction

According to Racine, visual communication is the translation of idea, stories and concepts that are largely textual or word based into a visual format associated with 2D images. However, research has focused on web design and graphic oriented usability.

Body

Visual communication begun 40,000 years ago when the Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe. They used sculptures, paintings body ornaments and engravings on rocks. Ideograms followed after evolution of the cave drawings. These were symbols that represented thoughts, ideas, and plans. The ideograms were especially popular in Chinese characters and the Egyptians word character. The alphabet was the next to follow which began around 2000 BC in ancient Egypt. It was a representation of the language of the semantic workers in Egypt. Pictograms, which were symbols representing a concept, object, activity or an illustration were also begun around this era. According to Pettersson, Cuneiform, which begun around 5000 years ago and was developed by Iraqi southerners, the Sumerians, so that they could keep accounts since the number of business transactions had increased.

These records were written on clay tablets, although they were not efficient because the writing wasn't neat. Reed was also used since it was easily available. They wrote on the clay tablets using a wedge shaped tool and the discoverers of the writings called it cuneiform, meaning wedge shaped. According to Muller, the Sumerian style of writing was also adapted by other communities such as the Hurrian’s. Since the Sumerian system was complex, the communities that adapted them for example the Persians, simplified it, giving rise to a new form of writing called the Old Persian cuneiform, which had less alphabets as compared to Sumerian cuneiform. Later on, the Egyptians came up with hieroglyphics, which combined ideographic elements with ancient alphabets.

The Egyptians eventually came up with an alphabet where every symbol stood for a single phoneme and most world alphabets are seen to have a direct descent from this. The Greek alphabet was where most of the Western countries adopted the alphabet for example, Europe. Some of the most beautiful visual designs on manuscripts were made during the medieval times where the added beautiful decorations on their work, and this work were known as illuminated manuscripts. Illuminated manuscripts were books where text was simplified by addition of decorations or illustrations. Most of these manuscripts were written on parchment.

This rise in books brought a rise in illuminations, which was frequently used by the rich to reserve their specialty books, and was also used, on scriptures, such as the Bible, to give them a pleasant shine.

The Medieval era brought with it the emergence of beautiful well decorated books full of colors and variety of writing styles. According to Bower, the earliest printed books we're putting together around 1,500 years ago, and were called incunabula, and were usually held with a lot of care. Johannes Gutenberg made an invention which print books a lot faster. This was an advantage since books were on demand, since more people wanted to become literate. The invention could print designs onto the many books it printed. According to WEB, calligraphy became popular around the renaissance times, where calligraphy masters were tasked with decorating books and diaries, especially for the rich people. This calligraphy masters would travel far in order to also teaches the rich calligraphy.

Since many artists come up at this point, there was also a lot of use of drawings and paintings between the 14th and 17th century, including the works of famous artists such as Leonardo De Vinci. He has one of the most uniquely beautiful and sought after illustrations of all time. The varying of illustration style also spread onto the field of science where aspects such as anatomy started being represented through visual mea. Other illustrations that came up include maps and architectural drawings. Between the 18th and 19th century the industrial revolution brought about the moveable printing that would use color and include human illustrations in their books. During this period, a French inventor, Nicephorus Niepce, a French inventor, invented the camera, which could be used to capture moments and events. According to Steele, posters and advertisements were also popularized during the 19th century due to the emergence of the newspapers. In the 1960’s, many designers begun to modernize graphic design and it was used as a marketing strategy by big companies such as Chermayelf and Geismar at the time. The emergence of computers, such as the UNIVAC, which was the first computer with a human and artificial intelligence understanding, revolutionized the advertising and poster, since one could incorporate typography using the computer. Eventually, there came there modern apps such as Photoshop and illustrator, that redefined the roles a graphic designer could undertake, broadening the field.

Conclusion

Today, the emergence of the worldwide web has increased the demand for graphic designers to design many varying websites and most common design today is the flat design, which incorporates the use of 2 dimensional images with simplistic shapes and colors that are easy on the eye. The continual growth and emergence of new easy interface on computers will enable visual communication to remain a relevant field.