GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / OvervIEW I / lvII Early Alphabets 1 Visual Language Systems 1 2 Cuneiform 13 3 Egyptian Hieroglyphics & Scripts 18 4 The Phoenician Alphabet 29 5 The Greek Alphabet 35 6 The Etruscan Alphabet 43 7 The Latin Alphabet 46 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / OvervIEW II / lvII © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / OvervIEW III / lvII 3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet 4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE 40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet 800 BCE Greek Alphabet © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / OvervIEW Iv / lvII ABCD Alphabetic Charactersitics EFGHI CRITERIA 1. A set of visual symbols 2. Used to express one or more languages JKLMN 3. Individual glyphs for individual sounds 4. Smaller units than syllables or words 5. Characters representing consonants OPQR 6. Characters representing vowels 7. Standard ordering (alphabetical order) STUV WXYZ © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY (GDT-101) / EARLY ALPHABETS 1 / 57 40,000–4,000 BCE Visual Language Systems Several thousand years of proto-alphabetic exploration resulted in a wealth of written variety but also created a number of usability issues. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 2 / 57 40,000–4,000 BCE Protowriting systems • Image-based communication • These cannot be considered “writing” Early evidence of protowriting has been discovered in the Chauvet and Lascaux caves in France and the Altamira Caves in Spain. Repetition of agreed-upon shapes is the essence of a writing system. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Wall painting of Reindeer, Lascaux Cave, France, circa 15,000 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 3 / 57 CIRCA 4,000 BCE Non-alphabetic writing systems • Pictographs, rebuses, logographs, ideographs, and syllabaries • Disparate and hard to learn • Localized • Lacked structure • Functioned differently © Kevin Woodland, 2020 A sample of early written language systems existing circa 3,000 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 4 / 57 CIRCA 3,200 BCE Pictographic systems Considered the first step towards written language systems • Image-based communication • Derived from petroglyphs • Reliance on cultural knowledge • Limited use case • 1 character = 1 word • Required many characters © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Petroglyphic Pictograms and Ideographs, Utah, United States, circa 200 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 5 / 57 CIRCA 2,000 BCE Phaistos Disk • 241 highly detailed pictograms • Hatchet, eagle, carpenter’s square, animal skin, vase • Relief impressions in terra cotta • Origin of movable type? © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Phaistos Disk, Minoan Civilization, Crete, circa 2,000 BCE (excavated in 1908) GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 6 / 57 CIRCA 3,000 BCE Rebus systems • Two or more symbols are used to force the phonetic expression of a word • Required heavy understanding of spoken language • Extremely limited use case A rebus must be deciphered, unlike pictographs, which only need to be identified. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Hieroglyphics representing the Rebus Principal · Bee & Leaf (Belief) · Sea & Sun (Season) GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 7 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Paul Rand, 1988 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 8 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 9 / 57 CIRCA 3,200 BCE Logographic systems • Reliance on cultural knowledge • Limited use case • 1 character = 1 word • Required many characters • Difficult to use outside originating tribes • Chinese hanzi, Japanese kanji, and Korean hanja © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Luwian logographs, Turkey, circa 1,400 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 10 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Chinese Hanzi GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 11 / 57 CIRCA 3,000 BCE Ideographic systems A combination of two or more pictographs intended to represent a concept ox + mountains = wild ox © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / VISUal LangUage SysteMS 12 / 57 CIRCA 3,000 BCE Syllabaries • 1 character = 1 syllable • Basic speech elements • Consonant and vowel combination • Words required many drawn strokes © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Old Persian syllabary, 600 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY (GDT-101) / EARLY ALPHABETS 13 / 57 3,200 BCE Cuneiform A major writing development in Sumeria (present day Iraq) comprised of abstract marks corresponding to spoken sounds. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / CUneIForM 14 / 57 3,200 BCE Cuneiform Early cuneiform was pictographic, but eventually turned on its side and abstracted into lines and shapes © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / CUneIForM 15 / 57 3,200 BCE Cuneiform • Began as a method of recording basic information • Harvested clay from local river beds • Means “wedge shaped” • Wedge-shaped stylus by 2,500 BCE, rather than a pointed stylus © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / CUneIForM 16 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Clay Tablet, Mesopotamia, 3,000 BCE GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / CUneIForM 17 / 57 3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet 4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE 40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet 800 BCE Greek Alphabet © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY (GDT-101) / EARLY ALPHABETS 18 / 57 2,700 BCE Egyptian Hieroglyphics & Scripts Ancient Egyptians produced three innovative varieties of proto-alphabetic written expression. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 19 / 57 2,7000 BCE Hieroglyphics Greek for “sacred carving” Made from three different parts: 1. Ideographs Pictorial denotation of an object 2. Phonographs Denote a sound or sequence of sounds 3. Determinatives Provide clues to meaning and sounds © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 20 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 21 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 22 / 57 2,700 BCE Hieroglyphics Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 23 / 57 © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 24 / 57 2,700 BCE Hieroglyphics • Vowel sounds existed but were unwritten • Consonantal alphabet (no vowels) • Requires cultural knowledge • Relied on grouping devices © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 25 / 57 2,700 BCE Hieratic Script Developed around the same time as the hieroglyphic script and was used for official tasks (record keeping, accounting, and writing letters). © Kevin Woodland, 2020 The evolution of Hieratic Script GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 26 / 57 660 BCE Demotic Script The popular script, a name given to it by Herodotus, developed from a northern variant of the Hieratic script in around 660 BCE. It lasted roughly 200 years. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 27 / 57 Egyptian Hieroglyphics Egyptian Demotic Script Classical Greek © Kevin Woodland, 2020 The Rosetta Stone, Memphis, Egypt, circa 196 BCE. Discovered in 1799 CE by Napoleon’s army in Rosetta, Egypt. On display at the British Museum in London since 1802 CE. Translated in 1823 CE by Jean-François Champollion. GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / HIeroglyphs & EgyptIan ScrIpts 28 / 57 3,200 BCE 1,000 BCE 250 BCE Cuneiform Phoenician Latin Alphabet Alphabet 4,000 BCE 3,000 BCE 2,000 BCE 1,000 BCE 0 CE 40,000 – 3,200 BCE 2,700 BCE 700 BCE Protowriting Hieroglyphics Etruscan Alphabet 800 BCE Greek Alphabet © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY (GDT-101) / EARLY ALPHABETS 29 / 57 1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs, and Cretan pictographs come together to form the seeds of the first modern alphabet. © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / The PhoenICIan Alphabet 30 / 57 1,000 BCE The Phoenicians • Modern day Lebanon, Syria, and Israel • Seafaring merchants and ship builders • Needed an alphabet for their native tongue © Kevin Woodland, 2020 GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / The PhoenICIan Alphabet 31 / 57 1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet • Distillation of Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs, and Cretan pictographs • Simple for non-Phoenician people to learn • Read from right-to-left © Kevin Woodland, 2020 Phoenician Petroglyphic Inscription GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY / EARLY ALPHABETS / The PhoenICIan Alphabet 32 / 57 1,000 BCE The Phoenician Alphabet • Unprecedented use of alphabetical order • 22 letters, each representing