A Possible Future Project

Pictured here is a gem in my book collection.

The Dictionary of Visual Language (1980)

I first found out about this book from Jason Godfrey's Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books (The title is self-explanatory). As soon as I found out about it I searched Amazon and found it .... and placed it in my Wish List .... and (eventually) bought a copy. (I'm not an impulsive buyer.)

The Dictionary of Visual Language began life in 1975 as one of the "Pentagram Papers" (a series of promotional booklets made by the famous design firm). Even though the authors (Philip Thompson and Peter Davenport) took a year to make it, this prototype (entitled ABC of Graphic Clichés) only covered A, B and C. It took a couple of years to cover the rest of the alphabet. 

You could call this a dictionary of our visual culture. A catalogue of memes, even. From abacus to zebras, this book explains and shows how and why various things have been used in various graphic designs, from the 19th century to the 1970s (the book was published in 1980).

This book intrigues me because it kind of taps into something I did back when I was a child. Back then I had a small obsession with dictionaries with illustrations in them. It may have started with a DK CD-ROM. It was the app of the moment for me on my Dad's PC and it inspired me to do something. For about a few years I was drawing the alphabet. On the first sheet of paper I drew everything I could think of that started with "A". Then on the next sheet I did everything I an think of that began with the letter "B". And I go on until I reached "Z". I can't remember how many times I did this as a child. But one thing do remember is that the number of stuff I drew increased overtime, as I learnt about more stuff. It was an intellectual challenge that added to the 10,000 hours of drawing practice I had before high school.

Since then this may have developed into a fascination in cataloguing the world. I know they are people who do just that with nature (real and fictional). But my fascination in human ingenuity has made it focused on manmade things (artworks, buildings, manufactured objects and so on). But I'm also a visually-minded culture explorer (as evident with my comic and movie collection). So what if I combined these two obsessions into one single project?

What if I made my own "Cultural Vandal's Dictionary of Visual Culture"? The Dictionary of Visual Language was made as an art book for graphic designers, which is why its contents were mostly ads, magazine covers, and logos. It was made at a time when the profession was becoming more sophisticated and professional, especially after the "creative revolution" in advertising in the 1960s. (The writer of the foreword, George Lois, was a part of this revolution.).

But my version will cover all visual culture - cave art, tapestries, frescos, movies, video games, internet memes and so on. What many don't realise is that the same meme can have the same cultural values across every medium. No matter what medium, an image of a dove in it can represent peace. 

Its just an idea I just had. Do you think its worth perusing?