Ch. 1 Summary

Chapter 1 brought the beginnings of writing to forefront of the beginning of graphic design. From the beginning of man evolving from a hunched over creature, to a free-standing man, adaptation to the time at hand was crucial to the survival of man. Soon, extremely early forms of speech and writing had begun to be used to convey feelings, hunts, and ways to continue to survive in the vast world. A great quote was used that stuck out to me. "Until the electronic age, spoken words vanished without a trace, while written words remained"(Meggs 4). When you stop to think about it, words that are not written down almost disappear with every new breath. But thankfully for writing, some of those spoken words would never be forgotten. Once writing had begun to take form, civilizations soon began to record everything from crops to money, and whatever else occurred during their lifetime. Because of writing, those civilizations will be remembered for years to come.

When it came to actual visual communication, many drew back to the times of cave drawings, predominately in Africa and Europe. Most notably, (that also appeared in our first presentation) the Lascaux Cave in France seemed to depict a type of hunt in some way, possibly giving those who saw it valuable information about how to hunt and/or how to kill certain prey. But those were not the only interesting details of those cave drawings. The way that these prehistoric men/women created the cave drawings were an advancement in its own. The fact that they figured out how to create the pigments by using animal fat and different colors around them. From there, they were able to develop a type of communication that was pretty self explanatory. Pictographs were created from combining pictures and the earliest forms of words and sounds to try to create a readable language. From there, an explosion of writing occurred that spanned all over the world. Soon, a style of labeling and writing popped up in Mesopotamia. Their earliest form of labeling certain pots, crops, etc...was based on a number system that rooted from using a ten finger system. Because of this, life was made easier for the Mesopotamians. From there, other civilizations began to create their own style of writing. Most notably, the Egyptians. They created a picture-symbol type of writing that was given the name "hieroglyphics"(Greek for "sacred carving"). These hieroglyphics helped depict every day life in Egypt, ranging from God worship to yearly crop reports. The system could be read in any way, provided that they author gives a starting point to being reading from. Soon, rebus, a style of depiction that used the sounds of different objects to convey a sentence was widely used along with the hieroglyphics. Because of these advancements in writing, history was not only being made, but also made possible for future people like us to read, interpret, and learn.

Yes, there are words. There are spoken words between person to person. There are also written words to read. But how did they get there? Did they just magically appear on the page, clay pot, or stone? No way in hell. But that would be cool though. There were advancements in writing utensils and writing mediums. Early writing utensils were in the forms of stylus like reeds that were sharpened at the end to be able to carve deep impressions into the medium. Early mediums would differ from civilizations but the most popular early medium was clay. When wet, it was easily impressionable and permanent when the pieces of clay were dried/fired in a kiln. These were the most favored pair of writing utensils until the Egyptians came along and revolutionized writing in a way that could almost never be paralleled. They figured out that by taking strips from the Cyperus papyrus plant and laying them horizontally, then laying another layer on top perpendicular to the original layer, and pressing them together until they formed on unified sheet, they created one of the most important inventions every created; paper. After the creation of paper, not only did the medium of writing expand, but also the types of utensils expanded along with different types of inks, along with new, bold colors from the world around them. Because of their advancements in writing, communication between people all around the world has almost become an after thought. Without the beginnings of language and writing, the world would not be the world we live in today.

Fact of the reading: The Rosetta Stone, discovered in August of 1799, was one of the greatest archilogical finds ever. It had hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek lettering, giving the history of Egypt and other civilizations.