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[RRE]Visual Language
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Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 13:59:33 -0800 (PST) From: bobhorn@well.com (Robert E. Horn)
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FEEL FREE TO FORWARD TO COLLEAGUES WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED
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TITLE: VISUAL LANGUAGE Global Communication for the 21st Century
AUTHOR: Robert E. Horn, Visiting Scholar Program on People, Computers, and Design Center for the Study of Language and Information Stanford University
SUMMARY: This book makes the claim that a new international auxiliary language is emerging that tightly integrates words and visual elements, a development that is radically increasing the ratio of visual elements to text. It suggests that a large number of drivers among them technology and the complexity of modern society are pushing the growth and development of the language by people in many professions in many countries. The author treats the phenomenon as a language by presenting the first exploration of its syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Of particular interest are the chapters on functional semantics which ask the question: What do words do best and what do visual elements do best -- when they are tightly integrated? A chapter on the history of visual language identifies 70 key innovators and innovations that have played a key role in the evolution of visual language and shows examples of those innovations. The book concludes with examination of the direction visual language is heading and a survey of possibilities and challenges. The book is also the first to be composed in visual language about visual language. As such it contains almost 3,000 visual elements in 270 pages, exemplifying the radical alteration of the text to visual element ratio.
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CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. A NEW LANGUAGE EMERGES
Visual language is a new language composed of tightly integrated textual and visual elements. Its emergence is a result of such driving forces as globalization, increasing complexity both in commerce and technology, and the convergence of vocabularies from many previously distinct fields.
2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF INNOVATIONS
Invention of the various components and conventions of visual language has taken place over centuries.
3. COMMUNICATION UNITS, MORPHOLOGY, AND SYNTAX Examination of the building blocks of visual language.
A. Size: Communication units in visual language
Different sizes of visual language components -- from icon to mural -- suggest categories for subsequent linguistic analysis.
B. Components: Morphology of visual language
Four approaches to identifying primitive elements of language are examined; a synthesis based on the concept of a visual unity is proposed.
C. Combinations: Syntax of visual language
Preliminary investigation into visual language syntax reveals that it is informed and constrained by spatial dimensions and perceptual principles.
4. EMERGING SEMANTICS How meaning arises in visual language.
A. Semantics of tight integration
The major semantic theme of the book: how do visual elements and text work together to produce meaning?
B. Semantics of visual metaphors
Correlation is found between visual metaphor and contemporary theory about verbal metaphor.
C. Diagram semantics
The varieties of diagraming make fundamental contributions to the vocabulary and semantics of visual language.
D. Semantics of cartooning
Cartooning has a wide variety of semantic conventions that are spreading rapidly around the world and that provide a rich vocabulary.
E. Semantics of space, line, and composition
Arrangement of elements on a page or in 3 dimensions is important in discussions of how visual language creates meaning.
F. Semantics of time
How visual language shows phenomena of change, transition, and time is informed by conventions from the world of film and illustration.
5. FUNCTIONAL SEMANTICS OF CONTENT
This chapter and chapter 6 explore situations in which text works best and in which visual elements work best when the 2 are tightly integrated. Intensive examination of substantive content; that is, how visual language shows who, what (outside appearance), what's inside, where, when, how it works or changes, how to do it, motion, which (i.e., name, label, indicate), which (i.e., definition), examples, what can't be seen, and comparisons (quantitative and qualitative).
6. FUNCTIONAL SEMANTICS OF RHETORIC
Continues the examination of whether and why textual and visual elements work best when the intention is navigation, organization, or influencing the reader. These rhetorical functions are examined in detail: guide the reader, focus attention, cluster elements, organize page or screen, show context, provide lightness and humor, increase impact, and manipulate and operate.
7. PRAGMATICS OF VISUAL LANGUAGE
Visual language practices, their role and effect in social interactions.
A. Social context and principal applications
The broad range of situations in which visual language flourishes -- no matter the topic. An estimate of the number of visual language speakers.
B. Multifaceted reading process
How the process of reading visual language is significantly different from reading prose.
C. Design and effectiveness
As more people incorporate visual language into their communications, standards for effectiveness -- based both on aesthetic and cognitive science principles -- will become increasingly important.
8. CONCLUSIONS AND CHALLENGES
Principles for using visual language, predictions regarding its future place in global communications, further theoretical and practical research directions.
Notes
References
Index
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BIOGRAPHY
Robert E. Horn Author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century
Robert E. Horn is a visiting scholar in the Program on People, Computers and Design of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University for the past few years. He has taught graduate courses at Harvard and Columbia universities and at Sheffield University in England. The inventor of Information Mapping, a powerful, comprehensive technique for analysis and organization of information now taught in 31 countries, Horn is also a pioneer in hypertext, the method of linking information on the World Wide Web. He is the author of Mapping Hypertext, a breakthrough book, which anticipated the intense visual-verbal integration of the Web, and is among the early books on hypertext still enjoying regular sales because of its focus on understanding the underlying structures and organization of information.
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And do look at http://www.macrovu.com
There are four doublepage spreads from the book reproduced.
They are representative of the entire book.
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FROM THE PREFACE
ORIGINS OF THE IDEAS
The ideas for this book initially arose on the day, in 1984, that I first saw a Macintosh computer. I realized that easy access to computerized drawing programs would bring into being a whole new world of communication possibilities. For the first time, nonartists could use the computer to draw and could endlessly modify and reuse drawings once they were created. I immediately began to use some clip art in my ordinary business and personal communications. At that time I was CEO of Information Mapping, Inc., now one of the world's premier information management companies, and I thought of the graphic computer as simply a way to add graphics to our existing method of analyzing and organizing business communication documents.
WHY THIS BOOK NOW?
Not until a couple of years later did I come to understand that, in fact, people all over the world were using the capabilities of the graphic computer to create the fundamentals of a new communication tool -- a language based on the tight integration of words and visual elements, which in this book I call visual language. I saw this book as necessary to establish visual language as a language. After some research, I realized that no framework existed for analyzing and understanding the new types of communication units that are created when text and visuals are combined. Neither was there a linguistics of visual language. Borrowing the approaches of natural language linguistics is an insufficient way to analyze the systematics of visual language. Nor is the simple addition of concepts from art theory sufficient. For this new communication tool to flourish, I identified a need for the kind of deeper understanding that can come from an analysis based on the integration of linguistic and visual elements. Finally, I saw this book as a way to encourage people to begin using more visual language in their communications, to integrate text and graphics to communicate more effectively.
STYLE OF THE BOOK
An analysis of visual language must, of course, be written in visual language. (I hardly ever write otherwise these days.) This book could have been rendered in a variety of aesthetic styles, but I decided to use clip art, to further demonstrate how much one can communicate with this medium without original artwork. I also wanted to encourage others to use visual language, and the 1st hurdle often seems to be fear of drawing. I believe that clip art is going to be the primary tool that will facilitate most people's use of visual language in their everyday jobs. I recognize that using clip art gives this book a particular look that may be dismissed by some critics, which is often the fate of clip art. It is my belief, however, that clip art is yet evolving, and that different styles will soon become available that will make it an increasingly graceful and aesthetically pleasing communications tool.
A FOCUS ON 2 DIMENSIONS AND STATIC MEDIA
The two-dimensional page and screen are foundational for other media. Most of the semantic constructs discussed here transfer easily to the 3rd dimension and to motion. Thus, media such as virtual reality, multimedia, and animation are not heavily emphasized in this book. During their development, films are broken down into scenes and then into shots. This is why storyboards work in filmmaking. And it is why films can be analyzed using the techniques developed here for static media. As regards three-dimensional media like virtual reality, as such media develop enough complexity to be truly useful and interesting, they require the kinds of maps and navigational tools that are analyzed in this book.
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PIONEERING BOOK EXPLORES AN EMERGING INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE OF THE NEXT CENTURY
VISUAL LANGUAGE: GLOBAL COMMUNICATION FOR THE 21st CENTURY by Robert E. Horn
THE INTEGRATION OF WORDS AND VISUAL ELEMENTS
Throughout history words and images have occupied separate domains. We have been forced to think of ourselves as either word people or visual people. In this provocative and pathfinding book, Robert Horn shows how that wide gulf has at last being bridged. He makes a compelling case for considering visual language -- the tight integration of words and visual elements -- a truly new language with the distinct syntax and semantics expected of a language.
SYNTHESIS OF MANY VOCABULARIES
Horn argues that this new language growing up around us is a prelude to far-reaching changes in the very manner that we will communicate in the next century. He notes that the creation of visual language emerges from people around the world inventing components out of necessity to communicate about the ever-increasing complexity of our lives. Visual language is being synthesized from previously separate vocabularies as diverse as computer flow charts, business process diagrams, and cartoons and animation. It has grown and spread organically and globally in ways that artificially created international languages -- like Esperanto, which was invented by a single person -- have never done. In a significant sense, it is already an international language of technology, science, and business.
HISTORY, RESEARCH, LINGUISTICS, PRACTICAL GUIDE
This is several books in one: a lively introduction to the basic concepts of visual language; a splendid, concise history of some 70 major innovations that form the core history of the language; a closely reasoned survey of the research on the emerging syntax and semantics of the language: and an immensely practical guide to the applications of visual language.
WRITTEN IN VISUAL LANGUAGE
But this book is not only a pathfinding and provocative treatise, it is the first to use visual language itself to describe and analyze that language. By his use of visual language on every page, Horn demonstrates that it is an immensely flexible and effective communication tool and one that invites and delights us. Readers will not only learn about visual language, but will have the full experience of total immersion. They will experience what Horn calls a new multi-modal process of reading, simultaneously demanding and rewarding.
TO MANAGE COMPLEXITY
Horn shows how visual language is the best tool we have for managing the world's ever-increasing complexity and the augmented speed at which our civilization moves. He doesn't merely make these claims, but lays out clearly how this new language can be useful in visualizing complex issues, exploring deeper connections and feelings, facilitating creative problem solving, making group process visible, presenting multiple points of view, and facilitating cross-cultural and international communication.
Bob Horn's book is not only fundamental to the rapidly expanding worlds of visual language, but, by its synthesis of the best of visual and verbal components, it is a major contribution to understanding human communication in general.
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PRESS RELEASE For Release: Immediately
CONTACT: Robert E. Horn (Author) 415-775-7377 bobhorn@well.com
CLEANING UP AFTER THE INFORMATION EXPLOSION
Solutions To Communicating About Complexity Highlighted In Pioneering Book
SEATTLE, NOVEMBER 10, 1998 -- The complexity that ignited the information revolution has overwhelmed our conventional tools of communication and deeply affected the decision making capacities of most organizations. But help is already on the way through the emergence of a new "visual language," says Robert E. Horn in a new book to be published this December by Macro VU, Inc.
New cars now have more computer chips than most desktops. The National Library of Medicine catalogs upwards of 400,000 new research documents annually. The complexity of public policy issues in such areas as telecommunications and the environment is almost beyond comprehension. Even at the supermarket, we have to choose among 800 brands of cookies and beer and at least 90 brands of dog food. The result is that we are living in what Richard Shenk calls "data smog" and suffering a chronic condition of "information anxiety," according to Richard Saul Wurman. At the same time, complexity has produced a wealth of human creativity in the realm of communications, according to Horn's new book, Visual Language: The Global Communication of the 21st Century. But because our attention to date has been on hardware and software, rather than on language, Horn says, visual language has grown up unidentified and understudied.
Visual Language presents the author's decade-long research and analysis of visual language, defining it as "the tight integration of words and images to form new units of communication," and creating what Horn calls, "literally a new language and unquestionably one of the major global languages of the 21st century." Horn presents an in-depth survey of visual language and the first-ever exploration of the new syntax and semantics that have emerged -- "a new grammar for a new language." The fundamental focus on the combination of words and visual elements has been overlooked, adds Horn, because of the way English and Art are traditionally taught. Linguists have usually treated diagrams and other illustrations only as adjuncts to natural or spoken language. The shift in Horn's book is the merging of what for centuries have been separate domains -- words have long belonged to language studies and visual elements have been the property of fine arts.
Editors note: The emergence of visual language is quite unlike that of international auxiliary languages like Esperanto, which was invented by one person. Visual language is being created all over the world by merging vocabularies as diverse as engineering diagrams and cartooning. It has been increasingly used by scientists, engineers, and business people who have complex messages to get across quickly and effectively. Several chapters are devoted to identifying and developing the grammar of this new language, beginning with syntax -- an investigation Horn extends to include spatial placement of shapes and images, as well as words. In the book, Horn also identifies and names a group of new communication units "capable of 'saying' what we've never been able to say before. They allow complex, even multi-layered, concepts to be organized and presented with clarity and impact". The new communication units demand what Horn calls "multi-modal" reading -- a different kind of exploration of the page -- because visual language is not usually read paragraph after paragraph. Rather text is located where it is relevant to the visual elements.
"Very quickly," Horn says, "we realize that a new semantics is evolving. The tight integration of words and images creates new ways of producing meaning". The elements of visual language communication all have specific 'semantic functions'. In Visual Language, Horn sorts out some of the most important, so that we can begin to see what words do best and what visual elements do best, when they are working together. "This becomes the central question of the decade for people interested in communication", says Horn.
Paul Saffo, Director of the Institute For The Future, notes that the book "is an insightful and eminently practical guide to the emergent visual language field. And better yet, because Horn practices what he preaches, it is as useful to newcomers as to visual language professionals". Harlan Cleveland, President of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences writes, "Bob Horn is a new kind of writer. He writes about Visual Language in visual language -- by using words and pictures to reinforce each other. The result is charming, fascinating, and readily accessible".
According to Horn, the visual language phenomena happening all around us -- in multimedia and on the World Wide Web, as well as in books, newspapers, and magazines -- places words and images in a symbiotic and synergistic relationship. This synergy occurs, Horn says, "because in the work of communicating, although each remains distinct and free to do what it does best, the overall communicative effect of the elements is greater than the effect of simply having both elements present." David Sibbet, organization consultant and information designer, says, "Bob Horn's creation of a uniquely accessible, comprehensive orientation to the visual language explosion is transforming contemporary communications around the world."Visual Language is available from, MacroVU, Inc. a publisher becoming known for its visual language maps of Great Philosophical Arguments.
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COMMENTS ON VISUAL LANGUAGE BY ROBERT E. HORN
In this book Bob Horn has brought together the depth of his years of experience in information design with a wealth of research on the history and practice of visual languages. The result is a new synthesis: a way of thinking about visual language that integrates and extends the different elements on which he draws. It may come to be, as he predicts, the starting point for a new field of study that develops the "global language for the 21st century". --Terry Winograd, Professor, Stanford University. Program on People, Computers, and Design
Bob Horn is a new kind of writer. He writes about Visual Language in visual language -- by using words and pictures to reinforce each other. The result is charming, fascinating, and readily accessible. --Harlan Cleveland, President, World Academy of Arts and Sciences
This is an insightful and eminently practical guide to the emergent visual language field. And better yet, because Horn practices what he preaches, it is as useful to newcomers as to visual language professionals. --Paul Saffo, Director, Institute For The Future.
In 1917, Apollinaire, the poet of modernism, wrote: "Man is in search of a new language.... We must learn to understand synthetico- ideographically rather than analytico-discursively". Robert E. Horn's Visual Language is the first book I know of to respond to this call in a global sense. --Mary L. Shaw, Professor,Modern languages, Rutgers University
Horn has created a uniquely accessible, comprehensive orientation to the visual language explosion which is transforming contemporary communications around the world. --David Sibbet, Organization consultant and information designer
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ORDERING INFORMATION
Title: Visual Language: Global Communication For The 21st Century Author: Robert E. Horn Publisher: MacroVe Press -- Box 366 321 High School Rd. NE Bainbridge Island, WA 98110 Phone (206) 780-9612 FAX : (206) 842-0296 URL macrovu.com Type: Soft cover. 270 pages.illustrations on every page.index. ISBN# 1-892637-09-X Retail: $35.00 plus $5.00 shipping and handling
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