In my free time, I enjoy photography, film, and graphic design—especially when it concerns typography. I’ve always been fascinated with typography in fine printed work.
I think this interest could be translated into handwriting and penmanship when it concerns the materiality of writing. An investigation of early written language, its impact on modern languages, and the morphology of their form in pertinence to penmanship and handwriting would be exciting to explore. Perhaps an analysis of early symbols, numbers, and pictographs and their impact on contemporary written languages and visual communication in signage could be viable.
I recently returned from a trip to Germany, and the signs on the Autobahn were particularly interesting because they were designed to be language-independent. I would be interested in examining the similarities between these signs and early pictographs. I hypothesize that their respective visual grammars would be similar, despite the fact that early illustration and visual communication was done in the absence of standard written language, and the modern signs on the Autobahn were designed in order to transcend a multitude of languages.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Materialities of Writing: Response to Question 3
If a culture existed that used only crayons as a method of writing, it would be a curious one. Nevertheless, writing with crayons has its advantages, and this culture would embrace those advantages, turning what we (as part of our culture) view as shortcomings into norms.
Because writing with crayons is more physically challenging than writing with a pen or pencil (or, perhaps, typing on a keyboard), the most renowned writers would be those with enough physical prowess to stay resilient when drafting works. This physical prowess may become tangled with the culture’s perception of their intellectual abilities, forming a more concretely related complex of both physical and mental ability. It also may negatively impact those who possess superior intellectual ability but lack the physical strength to express their extraordinary ideas.
The culture, as a whole, may accept different styles of writing or drawing as essential to their cultural identity because of the likelihood that those who create them were accepting the difficulties of crayon-writing as normal. This could either contribute to an ignorance of legibility in favor of content, or it could foster an obsession with legibility over content, implying that the observing public would be more impressed with a writer’s visual comprehensibility.
If that is the case, the culture may view those that can produce perfectly legible and precise writing (not unlike ours) as the crème de la crème.
Because writing with crayons is more physically challenging than writing with a pen or pencil (or, perhaps, typing on a keyboard), the most renowned writers would be those with enough physical prowess to stay resilient when drafting works. This physical prowess may become tangled with the culture’s perception of their intellectual abilities, forming a more concretely related complex of both physical and mental ability. It also may negatively impact those who possess superior intellectual ability but lack the physical strength to express their extraordinary ideas.
The culture, as a whole, may accept different styles of writing or drawing as essential to their cultural identity because of the likelihood that those who create them were accepting the difficulties of crayon-writing as normal. This could either contribute to an ignorance of legibility in favor of content, or it could foster an obsession with legibility over content, implying that the observing public would be more impressed with a writer’s visual comprehensibility.
If that is the case, the culture may view those that can produce perfectly legible and precise writing (not unlike ours) as the crème de la crème.
Materialities of Writing: Response to Question 1
My approach to answering the question about Emily Dickinson’s poem changed in various ways because of the writing instrument with which I was required to write. Firstly, I realized that I could not conceptualize the response entirely in crayon, so I started a draft that I wrote with pen. After writing three page-length paragraphs, I started to copy my pen-and-paper text to the poster paper.
As I copied to the larger paper, I decided to represent the response in a way different from the way that I wrote my draft. Dividing the paper into three parts, I tried to place each of the three paragraphs in each third, placing them on a slant (representative of Emily Dickinson’s word choice in the poem). After completing the first section, I realized that I couldn’t fit each paragraph into their respective sections, and I would have to separate each paragraph visually by writing them with a differently-colored crayon.
As I moved to the second section, I realized that I could rotate the paper on its center axis, thereby making readers turn their heads—another representation of the poem’s meaning. Perhaps by requiring the reader to move their head (or to rotate the paper), the writing exerted some type of physical control on the reader, changing their perception of the text.
I found that using the crayon was difficult because it rarely maintained a sharp point, and that forced me to constantly adjust the crayon’s writing angle. It also impacted my ability to write legibly. Due to this inconvenience, coupled with the small amount of remaining space I had after the second paragraph, I found myself forgoing words or phrases for more concise ones.
As I copied to the larger paper, I decided to represent the response in a way different from the way that I wrote my draft. Dividing the paper into three parts, I tried to place each of the three paragraphs in each third, placing them on a slant (representative of Emily Dickinson’s word choice in the poem). After completing the first section, I realized that I couldn’t fit each paragraph into their respective sections, and I would have to separate each paragraph visually by writing them with a differently-colored crayon.
As I moved to the second section, I realized that I could rotate the paper on its center axis, thereby making readers turn their heads—another representation of the poem’s meaning. Perhaps by requiring the reader to move their head (or to rotate the paper), the writing exerted some type of physical control on the reader, changing their perception of the text.
I found that using the crayon was difficult because it rarely maintained a sharp point, and that forced me to constantly adjust the crayon’s writing angle. It also impacted my ability to write legibly. Due to this inconvenience, coupled with the small amount of remaining space I had after the second paragraph, I found myself forgoing words or phrases for more concise ones.
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