History of Graphic Design

1. AGS 1222/ AGD 1222
PREPARED BY: RINA BT. ABD SHUKOR
HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

2. CLO2: THE ORIGIN OF ALPHABET: Early Writing System
- Homo sapiens emerged
- Early innovations
- Evolved from Southern Africa
- Inhabit in caves
- Near Lake Turkana, Kenya
- Revealed a 30 million year old stone being invented to become a tool.
- Tool to dig roots or to cut away flesh from dead animals.
- Writing instead of speech
- Produce marks, symbols, pictures and letters
- Became a graphic part of spoken and unspoken thought
(experience, idea and historical event)
- Expressive
- Invention of writing and pictures were recorded to communicate
ideas for the early people before century.

3. - Establish in Africa over 200 thousand years old
- Early Paleolithic to Neolithic period 35 000 b.c to 4000 b.c.
- European and Africans left paintings in caves ; Lascaux in southern
France and Altamira in Spain (figure)
- Balck made from charcoal.
- Warm tones from yellow to red – browns made from red and yellow
iron oxides.
- Pigment mixed with fat as a medium (paste)
- Images; animals
- Technique; smeared with fingers onto walls or fabricate brushes
from bristles or reeds
- Issue; Ritualistic purpose, survival and utilitarian
- Animal images indicate that they were magical rites designed to
gain power over animals and success in the hunt.
PREHISTORIC VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

4. - Abstract geometric signs; dots, square and other configurations
related to the animals in the cave painting.
- Made in the beginning of recorded history (5000 year)
- Animals were painted into pictographs, elementary pictures
(sketches) representing meaning depicted.
- From Africa to North America to the island of New Zealand
(petroglyphs)
- Petroglyphs are pictograph, ideographs, symbols representing
concept and ideas
- Engrave in the cave of Lorthet in southern France; scratched
drawing (sketch) deer, salmon, 2 diamond – shaped form : symbol
(figure 1)
PREHISTORIC VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

5. PREHISTORIC VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS
Figure 1

6. - 2 ways of early pictograph ; pictorial art (objects and events
recorded to increase integrity and accurateness) and secondly
(form into writing )
- Paleolithics developed simplification and stylization.
- Figures were abstract and expressed in minimal way
- Whereby late paleos were made less into letters.
PREHISTORIC VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

7. THE CRADLE OF CIVILATION NON ALPHABETICAL (SYMBOLS)
- Mesopotamia (land between rivers) Tigris and Euphrates rivers
across mountain of eastern turkey now known as Iraq
(Persian gulf).
- Early humans here are nomadic 8000 b.c
- Land with planted wild grains, animal and agriculture land.
- 6000 b.c objects were hammered from copper (tool) (figure)
- 3000 b.c bronze
- invented wheel
- Society of Sumerian arrived in Mesopotamia end of fourth
millennium b.c
- Mesopotamians were the first future race

8. THE CRADLE OF CIVILATION NON ALPHABETICAL (SYMBOLS)
- Sumerians contributed social (system of god-man relationship) and
intellectual progress (early writing system)
- System of God – Anu (God of heavens)
- Invention of writing revolution
- Mesopotamia records invaders (Sumerians) conquered the culture
- Including; Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Chaldeans

9. EARLY WRITING
- Ziggurat temple (figure 2)
- Recessed levels
- Smaller toward the top of the shrine
- Enormous power.
- Invented the gods and the kings
- Ministered magical and religious needs.
- Writing is the way to keep records the system and information of
that era
Figure 2

10. EARLY WRITING

11. EARLY WRITING
- Small clay tags identified contents of; pictograph.
- Earliest written records are tablets from the city Uruk
- Assemble pictographic drawings of objects, numeral and personal
names.
- Produced a reed stylus sharpened to the point and drew fine,
curved lines of the early pictograph.
- Clay mud were held on the left hand while pictographs were
scratched onto the surface (figure 3)
Figure 3

12. EARLY WRITING
- Structured on a grid of horizontal vertical division
- 2800 b.c pictograph written in horizontal rows, from left to right
and top to bottom right (figure 4)
- Three hundred year later (3100 b.c),
pointed stylus was upgraded into
“triangular – tip”
- Stylus were pushed into clays instead
of dragging it through (figure 5)
Figure 4
Figure 5

13. Figure 6
EARLY WRITING
- This is whereby pictographs are evolved into abstract sign called
“cuneiform” (figure 6)
- When picture – symbols represented animate and inanimate
objects, signs became “ideographs”
- Sun represents day and light

14. EARLY WRITING
- Pictures are used in Phonograms (graphic symbols for sounds).
- Adverbs, prepositions and personal names could NOT be presented
into pictographic style.
- Picture symbols represented sounds of the objects.
- Cuneiform became rebus writing which pictures and pictographs
represented word and syllables.
- Cuneiform is difficult even it was simplified by the Assyrians.
- Mixed writing with relief images was presented on the “Blau
monument” (combining words and pictures on the same surface)
(figure 7)
- As well as the law code of Hammurabi which also used words and
picture in the 1792 – 1750 b.c

15. Figure 7
- On the stele contains 282 laws gridded in 21 columns.
- This Hammurabi’s code were stood in the main temple of Marduk
(Son god of Babylon) at Babylon (Iraq) as well as in other cities.
- Written in precise style, harsh penalties were express directly and
clarity.
- The code indicated; crimes,
punishments, established social
order and justice (figure 8).
- Written in “cuneiform” on a
2.44meter (8ft) tall stele (stone slab)
and were carved for memorial purpose
EARLY WRITING

16. Figure 8
- Example of case written on the Blau monument; “A thief stealing
from a child to be put to death”, “a physician operating on a
slightly wounded man with a bronze scalpel shall have his hands
cut off” and “a builder who builds a house that falls and kills the
owner shall be put to death”.
EARLY WRITING

17. - Produced visual identification of cattle (beast) and proprietary
marks (trademark) of the ownership to be established. It is identify
case problems developed of superior quality inspired repeat
purchases.
- The means of identifying is the author of the clay cuneiform tablet
at certifying documents and contracts proving the authority of
religious and royal proclamations.
Cylinder seals
- The Mesopotamian cylinder seals provided forgery proof method
for sealing documents and proving their authenticity (originality)
(Figure 9)
- These small cylinders had images and writing etched into their
surfaces.
MESOPOTAMIAN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION

18. - Its is worn on a string around the neck or wrist.
- Images could be reproduced and can be seen in a form of printing.
- Herodotus a Greek historian (500 b.c) identified that Babylonians
wore the cylinder seal on a cord (rope) around their wrist like a
bracelet.
MESOPOTAMIAN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION
Figure 9

19. - The most used of the ornaments (decoration), status symbols and
unique personal signatures.
- Cylinder seals are mark to use it on the house door when the
occupants were away and indicating burglar had entered the
premises.
- The earliest seals were engraved with simplified pictures of kings,
cattle (beast) or mythic creatures.
- Developed more narrative images; one god, man fighting a battle
and man killing wild animal.
- In the Assyrian period, North Mesopotamia stylized heraldic design
(badge symbol); stories of gods and illustrated animal were shown
engaged in battle (figure).
MESOPOTAMIAN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION

20. - It identifies the glory of Mesopotamian civilization during the
dynasty of King Nebuchadnezzar at the (d. 562 b.c) in the city of
Babylon.
- In the 538 b.c Babylon became the richest city in the world with a
population reaching a million.
- Then it fell to the Persian decease (destroyed) and begins to
become the Persian colonial and followed by Greece and Rome.
- The birth of Christ, great cities of Babylon and Ziggurat were fallen
as well as abandoned invisibly.- Egyptians took over and evolved
complex writing based on pictographs.
- Phoenicians formed a complexity of cuneiform with simple
phonetic signs.
MESOPOTAMIAN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION