Visual communication

Visual communication

The history of picture grams go back as far as human history it’s self from cave paintings to colossal images drawn into mountainsides or plains.

Here are some pictures of cave painting over half a million years old:

These paintings are the first ever form of visual communication as the person whom made these paintings clearly tried portraying some form of story or scene for others to see. Even though these painting were very un-developed and new, you can still easily make out what most of the images are.

Further down the line humanity started using pictures for communication for example the next Civilization to use picture grams were the Egyptians who used pictures of things to make up an alphabet of “Hieroglyphics” which is very similar to our alphabet today. However these sorts of images are known as Abstract images as if you didn’t know the hidden meanings of the hieroglyphs you would not be able to fit together the story trying to be told. These are also historical images as they define a culture.

Here are some pictures of some Egyptian Hieroglyphs: 

Humanity still use these methods to exchange information between other people who study what the meanings are because today every language is made up from symbols or pictures which each have a specific meaning or sound.

For example the Chinese are still using calligraphy for their language: 

These are also historical images as they define culture and society.

The only difference between modern calligraphy like this and the cave paintings is that when you see a cave painting no matter who you are you can make it out as it portrays events or objects, this is called a linear image which is when you look at the image it tells you something straight away without any hidden meanings where as today if someone wrote on a wall in a modern language it would be an Implicit or Abstract image as you cant tell what the meaning of the image is without having studied the language so there for it would have a hidden meaning to someone who wasn’t familiar with the culture.

All together this has been the most effective way of carrying a story or event through the ages however I feel that today we have moved away from the simplicity of explicit pictures and have become to engrossed in different cultures and have produced harder to understand abstract languages. One of the best points to this is that the image can be as big or small as the creator wants, depending on he/she wants it in a book or on the side of a mountain; e.g.

 

These are called “Geoglyphs” they are images of something that has used the earth as a canvas, these images are usually on a colossal scale compared to the cave paintings and can be seen by looking down miles in the air. These are often explicit images as just by looking at it you can tell what it is.

The last type of image I’m going to research is scientific imagery where things don’t necessarily at first resemble an image but after a while of looking they do in-fact display an image, these images are known as optical illusions  

This concludes my research on the different forms of visual recording and methods used throughout ages even though there are still many more such as digital imagery and propaganda but I believe I have done what I’ve needed to, in order to understand the differences between explicit/literal, implicit/abstract, emotional, scientific and historical imagery.