Everything has its own history

Yes, it is a fact that no one can deny and therefore Visual communication is not an exceptional case. Therefore, in order to have an throughout understanding and feel the necessary of Visual Communication, I think it is clever to going back history; at least to know what we are talking about now.

Since “Visual Communication is the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: art, signs, photography, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, color and electronic resources. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphic oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.” Wikipedia. We begin with the first art piece which are the cave paintings of shamen dating c40,000 years ago. Scientists are still doing research on it and looking for the true meanings of these paintings. However, as for now, the definition of the painting is interpreted: A current interpretation is that they were painted by shamen who retreated into the caves in a ‘trance like’ state and that the shamen derived some sort of strength from the cave itself.

Then it came the development of ideogram/ideograph which is the term itself common used to describe logographic language systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese charaters. However, symbols in logographic system generally represent words or morphemes rather than pure ideas. On the other hand, nowadays, an ideogram or ideograph is a graphical symbol that represents an idea, rather than a group of letters arranged according to the phonemes of a spoken language, as is done in alphabetic languages. Examples of ideograms include wayfinding signage, such as in airports and other environments where many people may not be familiar with the language of the place they are in, as well as Arabic numerals and mathematical notation, which are used worldwide regardless of how they are pronounced in different languages

Followed by the invention of language and number, other apllications also invented with the purpose of visual communication such as books, illuminated manuscrips, photography and film. Under influence of historic changes, for example the Renaissance, Industrial revolution, the collapse of Soviet Union, visual communication from time to time has been witnessed some revolutions it self, and some of them are really enriches the human knowledge by some art master pieces from great artists : Salvatore Dali, Michael Angelo, Van Gogh, Warhol...

Here below is the Timeline of art which I accidentally ran into while googling about Visual Communication. In my opinion, this table really gave me a clear vision of the history of art and visual communcation regarding some of the most importance events at that time.

Timeline of Art

Era	Artist	Style	Media	World
B.C.
15,000	Cave paintings	Ancient	Charcoal Dirt
5000		Ancient	Pictographic writing Pottery wheel Early paints	Civilizations of: -Mesopotamia -Egypt -Minoan
1000	Dipylon vase	Egyptian	Papyrus	Jerusalem founded
400	Acropolis Grecian urns	Greek		Greece's Golden Age Alexander the Great
200	Nike of Samothrace	Roman	Chinese invent paper Quill pen	Rome dominates Near East
100	Pompeii wall art	Roman		Peak of Roman Empire
A.D.
400	Pantheon	Byzantine		Rome falls
600	Lindisfarne Gospels	Byzantine	Papermaking introduced from China	Charlemagne
1000	Bayeux Tapestry	Romanesque	Paper first manufactured in Europe Tempera Fresco Ink	Normans invade England
1250	Chartres master builder Giotto Lorenzetti	Gothic	Revival of paintmaking	Magna Carta
1400	Botticelli da Vinci Piero Lippi	Early Renaissance	Printing press Oil paint Pastel	Holy Roman Empire de Medici rules Florence Colombus reaches Americas
1500	Michelangelo Raphael Titian El Greco Bruegel Arcimboldo	High Renaissance Northern Renaissance	First use of canvas	Elizabeth I Magellan circles globe
1600	Rubens Rembrandt Poussin Leyster	Baroque	Modern pencil invented	Galileo British colonize America
1700	Boucher Watteau Hogarth	Rococo		Steam engine invented Franklin experiments with electricity
1750	Fragonard David	Neoclassism		American Revolution French Revolution
1800	Goya Ingres Constable	Romanticism Realism	Photography Watercolors	Louisiana Purchase Queen Victoria Irish famine Railroads spread
1850	Bierstadt	Pre-Raphaelites	Tube paints Fountain pen	U.S. Civil War Evolution theory Sanford founded
1875	Cassatt Gauguin Van Gogh Monet Morisot Seurat	Impressionism Post-Impressionism	Ballpoint pen	Colonialism peaks Telephone invented Light bulb invented Automobile invented
1900	Hartley MacDonald-Wright Dalí Lange	Abstraction Fauvism Cubism Futurism Dada Surrealism	Acrylic paint Crayon	Airplane invented World War I Theory of Relativity Great Depression World War II Atomic bomb
1950	Albers Pollock de Kooning Rothko Stella Warhol	Abstract Expressionism Pop Art Op Art		Vietnam War Apollo moon landings Fall of Soviet Union AIDS virus
2000

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