The inventions of writings & alphabet

writing

• any conventional system of marks or signs

• Renders language visible.

• ___ is important.

• ____ expresses who we are as people.

• ____ makes our thinking and learning visible and permanent.

• ____ fosters our ability to explain and refine our ideas to others

language

• “Communication of thoughts and feelings through

  a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds,

  gestures, or written symbols.

Graphics design

• The art and profession of selecting and arranging visual

  elements

• Sometimes called “visual communications,”

Utilitarian

• Designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive.

Ritualistic

• Relating to or characteristic of rituals followed as part of a religious or solemn ceremony.

Mesopotamian system

• where did writing first develop?

Sumer

• was an ancient civilization founded in the Mesopotamia region

• Known for their innovations in language,

Sumerian cuneiform tablet

• system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens.

Cuneiform

• used to record a variety of information such as temple activities, business, and trade. Cuneiform was also used to write stories, myths, laws, and personal letters.

• from ___ to ideograph this writing became

  what we call “Rebus writing”,

• rebus: not by words, but by things

3100 B.C

• when did king menes unify the land of egypt and formed the first dynasty?

Hieroglyphics

• were written in horizontal rows or vertical columns and were read according to the direction the images were facing

hieroglyphic system

• instead of each letter (or character) representing part of

  a word, each hieroglyph represents a whole word.

papyrus

• the development of a paper-like substrate for manuscripts, was major step forward in Egyptian visual communications.

Phoenician alphabet

• was the first written alphabet in history

Phoenicia

• is the ancient region along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean that corresponds to modern Lebanon.

• became notable merchants, traders, and colonizers in the 1st millennium BCE.

Boustrophedon

• the greeks adopted the phoenician style of writing from right to left but later they developed this writing method.

• it means to plow a field with an ox. In other words, text was written and read from left to right, the next line left

  to right, and then right to left.

The Scroll

• made of papyrus were commonly used as the

  preferred substrate for writing lots of related text content.

Capitalis Quadrata

• an ancient Roman form of writing, and

  the basis for modern capital letters.

Capitalis Rustica

• These letterforms were condensed to take up less space and were quickly written.

Charlemagne

• attempted to standardize page layout, writing style, and decoration. With Celtic influences, including the use of guidelines, ascenders, and descenders, letters were ordered into a uniform script called Caroline minuscules.

Caroline minuscules

• are the forerunner of our

  contemporary lowercase alphabet.

Textura

• it is the name for this type of Gothic lettering due to the dense black texture of the pages.

The Romanesque

• this period between 1000 and 1500 A.D. brought

  about renewed religious fervor/passion.

Chinese characters

• were designed to be written with straight or gently curving brush strokes.

• The ___ writing system is the most widespread writing system.

Calligraphy

• is considered the highest art form in China. Oriental painting and calligraphy are executed with ink on paper or silk using gestured strokes of the brush

.

Cyrillic alphabet

• It is extremely distinctive because it is written vertically, top to bottom, and with a line down the right side.

• It’s vaguely reminiscent of a very sharp Arabic writing