Word and Image

If you look at childrens' drawings (aged 2-4), they are more like symbols than actual portraits of things. They draw what they imagine hands, eyes, hair to be like, rather than what is in front of them. Making comes before matching. They are conceptual drawings. Pictures and words go hand in hand. When they draw a circle they are thinking of a word in their head - Circle.
Picturing - right side
Speaking - left side


'Drawing on the right side of the brain' - Betty Edwards
This suppresses the verbal side, the concept of the hand. You can then use the picture side to draw what is in front of you rather than a concept of what you think is in front of you. 


Words flatten a drawing. If there is a 3D picture, then you add text to the image, it flattens it down.

Emiel – flatter picture

Cubism – flat image (Picasso)

Pheoenician – first to have alphabet. WATER – This does not represent water itself but the sound you make when uttering the word.

Rise of the image against the word or vias versa.

Utopian concept

Does the look of the page change the meaning of the words?

I think it can have an effect.

Steinberg – The picture's main focus is of the writing, but if you look closely, there isn't any words. Its just drawing meant to look as if it is writing but does not take the form of any known language.

Global cultural differences removes creativeness of an artist when trying to create symbols. Symbols/Isotypes as bias to the country/culture that they are created in.  What may seem to be a symbol of a phone in one country could be completely alien to another. The most unified symbol is that of the men and women characters on W/C, they are virtually the same around the world.

Isotypes - Otto Neurath believed that it was possible to create symbols that would be excepted as a universal language. He created a series of symbols which represented different cultures and race using symbols. The generalisation he used would, nowadays be seen as racist and ignorant of cultural diversity and individuality. It is not possible to create symbolic language that could be used universally and we all have different cultures and knowledge.

Isotypes were a utopian concept, symbols were created to unite the world and spread globalisation. They have now lost their utopian assosiations. We no longer think that they will produce a better world.