Graphic Communication: History, Instruments, and Techniques
INTRODUCTION
Graphic communication has been around since prehistoric man told his stories in pictures carved on pieces of bone or painted on the walls of caves. Such images are the earliest attempts to communicate a message visually.
By the time of the pharaohs, the ‘decorative arts’ were wellestablished, predating the Christian era by thousands of years. The images used in the tombs of Egyptian kings took on deep symbolic meaning.
A coffin mask of theEgyptian pharaoh
Tutankhamun, the “boy king” who died in 1343B.C.
Visual expression progressed from pictures of events to depictions of ideas, to recorded history and recorded thought. In many instances, past cultures are available to us only through the work of some ancient graphic designer.
Through history, architects have manipulated visual imagery to assist the design process. Such imagery has assumed the form of construction documents, design drawings, analysis and details, various forms of sketches, and images conceived in the mind’s eye. The philosopher Richard Wollheim writes that representational seeing involves ‘seeing as’ (1971).
It requires foresight and imagination to comprehend a two-dimensional visual image as a three-dimensional inhabitable structure. Through visual artifacts, architects can transform, manipulate, and develop architectural concepts in anticipation of future construction. It may, in fact, be through this alteration that architectural ideas find form.
The architectural theoretician Marco Frascari suggests that drawing can guide architects to an understanding of architecture as both constructed and construed, because drawings intrinsically convey theory: ‘Real architectural drawings are not illustrations, but pure expression of architectural thinking.’
DEFINITION OF SKETCHES
The word ‘drawing’ presents a general term, whereas ‘sketching’ focuses on a specific technique. Both can take the form of an action or object, verb or noun, as each can imply movement.
The
Graphic communication has been around since prehistoric man told his stories in pictures carved on pieces of bone or painted on the walls of caves. Such images are the earliest attempts to communicate a message visually.
By the time of the pharaohs, the ‘decorative arts’ were wellestablished, predating the Christian era by thousands of years. The images used in the tombs of Egyptian kings took on deep symbolic meaning.
A coffin mask of theEgyptian pharaoh
Tutankhamun, the “boy king” who died in 1343B.C.
Visual expression progressed from pictures of events to depictions of ideas, to recorded history and recorded thought. In many instances, past cultures are available to us only through the work of some ancient graphic designer.
Through history, architects have manipulated visual imagery to assist the design process. Such imagery has assumed the form of construction documents, design drawings, analysis and details, various forms of sketches, and images conceived in the mind’s eye. The philosopher Richard Wollheim writes that representational seeing involves ‘seeing as’ (1971).
It requires foresight and imagination to comprehend a two-dimensional visual image as a three-dimensional inhabitable structure. Through visual artifacts, architects can transform, manipulate, and develop architectural concepts in anticipation of future construction. It may, in fact, be through this alteration that architectural ideas find form.
The architectural theoretician Marco Frascari suggests that drawing can guide architects to an understanding of architecture as both constructed and construed, because drawings intrinsically convey theory: ‘Real architectural drawings are not illustrations, but pure expression of architectural thinking.’
DEFINITION OF SKETCHES
The word ‘drawing’ presents a general term, whereas ‘sketching’ focuses on a specific technique. Both can take the form of an action or object, verb or noun, as each can imply movement.
The