In order to bring your work to life, there are essential skills to creating and capturing ideas through icons, symbols and letterforms. Jan Adkins, professional illustrator and educator, demonstrated the evolution of signs and symbols from human experience.
Adkins says, "Our modern letter forms evolved from the symbols created by our ancestors, who drew meaning from natural forms."
For example, Apis the Bull => letter A
But he also laments, "Our cultural symbols have become more and more meaningful... and less and less meaningful. Mostly because the power and resonance has been lost over the years."
Over the course of two hours, Jan walked the group through the history of type from the Babylonians, Romans, Holy Roman Empire and Guttenburg.
So what is the key difference between icons and symbols?
- An icon is a graphic device that represents some object or action, the graphic device being ascribed symbolic meaning(s) beyond the object represented.
- A symbol has only the meanings abscribed to itself, representing only a concept and not recognizable as a particular object.
Read more for links, images and references to more on the history of images and lettering.
Research and Links from Wikipedia:
Biohazard was adapted from a Japanese clan symbols.
Cuneiforms were written on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform ("wedge shaped").
For example, a keyboard is not and ancient symbol. It represents and object or activity, but not a complex cultural reference.
Boustrophedon or boustrephedon is an ancient way of writing manuscripts and other inscriptions in which, rather than going from left to right as in modern English, or right to left as in Hebrew and Arabic, alternate lines must be read in opposite directions. The name is borrowed from the Greek language. Its etymology is from βους, "ox" + στρεφειν, "to turn" (cf. strophe), because the hand of the writer goes back and forth like an ox drawing a plow across a field and turning at the end of each row to return in the opposite direction.
Lower Case Letters were formed by carlovingian miniscule.
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