Before Class-Chapter 1

In the previous post I mentioned that I have taken a course in art history, and much like that class, the history of graphic design begins with the earliest form of visual communication. According to the book the first recorded use of visual communication is found in the cave drawings made by early homo sapiens. I found it interesting that in my art history class we studied the same cave paintings found at Lascaux, but we were looking at this paintings strictly as the earliest form of art. Whereas the history of graphic design argues that the images found in the caves are in fact the earliest form of visual communication. The truth is, we will never figure out why these cave paintings were made because they date back before recorded history even began. All throughout the world are these markings, simple signs and symbols that were left behind by prehistoric artist/communicators. These prehistoric homo sapiens used these petroglyphs/pictographs to tell a story. Later on these pictographs developed into two different categories, they acted as the stepping stone for pictorial art and the pictographs are considered to be the beginning of the written language.

Mesopotamia otherwise known as the fertile crescent was the end of nomadic tribes and the beginning of developed civilizations. Stuck in between the Euphrates and Tigris river, Mesopotamia gave early man the opportunity to truly mature in the ways of communication. By not having to constantly be on the move, mankind was finally able to develop new tools and ideas along with the ability to record history. For example the book speaks of the city of Uruk where clay tablets were found that involved pictographs accompanied by numeric symbols in a vertical fashion. The marks made on the clay tablet were made from a wooden stylus by scratching the surface of the clay. According to the book around 2800 B.C. there is a noticeable switch from vertical columns to horizontal rows reading left to right. The invention of a triangular stylus also changed the way Paleolithic people went about visual communication. Instead of scratches on the surface the triangular stylus would gauge away at the clay which led to the development of abstract sign writing, otherwise known as cuneiform. Cuneiform was the true beginning of the written language, and from it came multiple advantages and social developments. For example historical records were made along with libraries stocked full of novels and poetry and tablets talking about religion, mathematics, history, medicine, astronomy. The use of writing also gave birth to the invention of written law which helped uniform society in the fertile crescent. The end of Mesopotamia gave birth to those empires that followed such as the Persian, Greek, and Roman empire.

However it was the Egyptian empire that evolved the written language and changed it into what is known as hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs is a complicated, highly developed form of writing that uses pictographs in order to tell a story. The Egyptians also did away with the use of cuneiform and replaced it with the use of phonetic signs. This system of writing that was put in place by the Egyptians is also known as a picture writing system. The word hieroglyphics is Greek for "sacred carving", these sacred carvings are found in Egyptian temples, tombs, and carved onto tablets. One of the more famous or most talked about piece of writing from the Egyptian empire is the Rosetta stone which was found by Napoleons army in 1799. The Rosetta stone is interesting and unique because it incorporates three scripts that were inscribed in three languages. Because the stone involved three different languages of the same script, the western civilization were able to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics and better understand their civilization. This discovery also allowed for the better understanding of the Egyptian writing system which contains over seven hundred hieroglyphs, one hundred of these hieroglyphs were mainly pictographs whereas the rest were known to be phonographs. The Egyptians created a new form of writing and they also created a new material to write on. Papyrus is the first form of paper. Made from the Papyrus plant found near the Nile river, papyrus had many uses but most importantly replaced the use of stone templates. The stem of this papyrus plant had a natural adhesive found in it, so when the plant was wet they would hammer the stems flat and have it dry in the sun. After being dried out they would then polish for a smooth surface. There were different grades of papyrus that were used depending on the importance of the document being written. They would write on papyrus by using a wet brush dipped into different pigmented ink cakes. The Egyptians were also known as the first civilization to use illustrated manuscripts, or in other words a combination of words and pictures that communicate a specific message. This invention led to the creation of more detailed books and stories much like the funerary text know as the Book of the Dead. Illustrated manuscripts invented by the Egyptians made way for later forms of communication found after the fall of the Egyptian empire.