Dear Ken, Paul and others interested in this discussion,
While weıre on the topic of comics that stretch the boundaries of whatıs
possible with pictures can I recommend Australian artist Shaun Tanıs The
Arrivalı which is completely wordless. Itıs a 128 pp story about, among
other things, the difficulty of learning a new language, and the émigré
experience more generally. Tan took out the top honors at the Angoulême
comic festival in 2009 with this. Angoulême is to San Diego ComicCon what
Cannes is to the Oscars.
My own research has been to try and blur the divide between words and
pictures.
Iım sure most of us know that the alphabet weıre using here began its life
as individual letterforms that were originally iconic pictures rather than
symbolic of sounds. Of course their function has evolved. However weıre
now reading the shape of words as pictures. Antelopeı is easier for most
of us to read than ANTELOPEı because the former has a relatively unique
picture shape compared with the latter which is more or less just another
rectangle.
I have published a caricatures of fonts in my book, The Picture in Design,
by using exactly the same principles one would use to caricature a human
face (exaggerations of deviations from norms). I successfully caricatured
Microgramma and Arial using Helvetica as my norm for sans serif
letterforms.
In the same book I applied syaneasthesia to an understanding of type. I
compare the open, rounded counters and clear geometry of Futura to the
points and twists of Fette Fraktur using the analogy that if these were
physical shapes in the real world, we would be more wary of the latter as
something we could snag our person upon and be injured by. In other words
the visual appearance of the typeface in which the words are set has a
strong bearing on how the message is received, as any graphic designer
knows.
The book came into being as an attempt to create a picture theory
specifically for graphic design, a realm where one most often wants to
communicate deliberately. These above experiments came about through the
somewhat facetious desire to see if a picture theory could apply to
typography in a way that typographic theory had never been helpful to me
as a designer who wanted to do understand how pictures communicate.
Best regards
Stuart
Dr Stuart Medley
Senior Lecturer
Associate Head of School
Coordinator Graphic Design
Rm 5.267
School of Communications and Arts
Edith Cowan University
Bradford St, Mt Lawley WA 6050
Australia
Signatory to the Charter
<http://napuaustralia.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=e9b79bbcca9fa489e3
2012110&id=ab3f15cd34&e=c457b9167f> of the National Alliance for Public
Universities
On 10/13/15, 5:45 AM, "Paul Mike Zender" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Ken:
>
>Usually lurking, I could not resist this post before it ³dries up.²
>
>I will read ³Unflattering² now that you has brought it to my attention
>(as you so graciously have many other worthwhile things), but I have not
>read it yet, so my comments are NOT on that work, or even your
>exploration of it as a valid PhD or not, but on the broader issue of the
>relative roles of words and images in you also raise in your post.
>
>Scott McCloudıs wonderful ³Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art²
>sounds similar to ³Unflattering² in that it is a didactic
>instructional/conceptual/thesis exploration in comic form. In
>"Understanding Comics" McCloud explores the various roles individual
>images can play from representational to conceptual. It's available on
>Amazon.
>
>When I started serious symbol/icon/pictogram research it was an aim of
>the research sponsor P&G to examine the potential of visual narrative to
>communicate on product packaging and so we studied, among other things,
>comics. It was fruitful study that produced some principles for visual
>storytelling. We affirmed that communicating complex narrative without
>words is challenging but quite possible. We affirmed that images are
>great at representing things nouns but are more challenged when
>communicating actions verbs - and states of being. Yet it is obvious
>from time-based/animated media that even these challenges are regularly
>overcome, for example, in cinema.
>
>Because my subsequent research has not looked toward comics as art or
>comics as philosophical inquiry but to developing principles for
>communication through various combinations of words and images which
>comics typify, my following observations are on the relative merits of
>image-based communication in particular with reference to the PhD Design
>dissertation.
>
>From 1508-12 Michelangelo covered the Sistine Chapel ceiling with visual
>story references and from 1751-72 Diderot explored explanation with
>images both at a time when few could read. Now most people read so it is
>possible to imagine think we have outgrown the need for images but
>research proves otherwise. The improved comprehension, retention, and
>acquisition of knowledge by combining words and images have been
>well-documented by Richard E. Mayer in research summarized in his book
>³Multimedia Learning,² and by many others since. (Iım using quote marks
>for worksı titles here because this forum doesnıt support italics) In
>your post you demonstrate through your argument that you donıt think
>weıre beyond using images, but it is an opinion Iıve encountered.
>
>More recently in ³Visible Language² there have been a number of articles
>on the integration of word and image. Matthew Petersonıs article in 48.1
>defines three categories for integrating text and image: prose primary;
>prose subsumed; fully integrated, and goes on to show user preference for
>each of these with fully integrated being most preferred. Anyone
>interested can get a PDF of the article at:
>http://visiblelanguagejournal.com/articles/article/880/
>
>Without doubt, fully integrated combinations of words and images are
>effective at communicating narrative, and specifically for Mayer and
>Peterson, with instructing. In this sense I suspect that none of us have
>any doubt that fully integrated words and images can be a PhD
>dissertation.
>
>However, choosing a proportion of verbal versus visual language is not
>trivial. It impacts what is said. Neil Postman wrote (and I quote loosely
>here because I am away from my library) that you canıt have a
>philosophical discussion using smoke signals because you would run out of
>blankets and wood before you got through the first postulate. Medium and
>message are linked. I am NOT saying words and images are media. They are
>components of media, but their balance is different in different media
>and the overall effects are I believe similar enough to warrant evoking
>the ghost of McLuhan.
>
>And yet
>
>I suspect that your statement:
><SNIP>
>Artists, cartoonists, or even some philosophers who want to communicate
>the content of experience may not need to use words. Artists,
>cartoonists, and philosophers who want to communicate research must use
>words, written or spoken.
><SNIP>
>is more a reflection of ingrained bias from our educational systemıs near
>total focus on writing for communication and its now near total neglect
>of communicating with visual symbols, and your own great writing skill,
>than a statement of fact. Because I am visually oriented I can easily
>think of things that words cannot do, communicate Picassoıs ³Faun
>Revealing² for example, but I have a harder time thinking of something
>that is impossible for visuals images to communicate, particularly if you
>include moving time-based images as noted above (cinema anyone?!?). It's
>hard for me to imagine an argument that could not be carried visually.
>Disproving that something is impossible is as simple as doing it and
>perhaps "Unflattering" is a first attempt at that, even if you arrant
>sure it is a completely successful PhD attempt. The fact the an early
>attempt leaves you on the fence should in fact be promising to further
>attempts.
>
>Rather than speculate whether a PhD Dissertation can or cannot be image
>based, I would argue that PhD Design dissertations should be more
>image-based than they currently tend to be. Requiring more visual
>presentation of design concepts i a PhD Design dissertation might help
>ground the PhD Design dissertation more in a conceptual world peculiar to
>design and keep PhD level design work from becoming just another
>philosophical exercise indistinguishable from so many other disciplines.
>
>Iım happy to be involved with a journal that continually expands my
>understanding of the capacities of words and images and their respective
>preferences. Preferences in the sense that each symbol format does some
>things well, prefers some things, over others. But to say images ³canıt²
>communicate some kind of argument (the inverse of your ³artists must use
>words² above) is not yet in my ³vocabulary.²
>
>I communicate better with images than words, which is why I will go back
>into lurking mode.
>
>DESIGN GENERALıS WARNING:
>This posting was communicated only in words because this list does not
>support images, supporting my assertion above about the current bias
>against images
>
>Mike Zender
>University of Cincinnati
>Editor, Visible Language
>
>
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