Unified and Universal Language

 

What is unified or universal visual language?

Unified visual language is used to bring words and a picture or icon ( visual elements) together to create a message without having to sentence explain what the object/subject is. This technique was used by modernists.

 

Reference to the thought and practices coalescing around the Bauhaus and black mountain college:

 

Bauhaus:

Joost Schmidt’s 1923 poster ‘uses words, lines, circles and arcs to create dynamic axes that combine text and graphics into a single message.’ In this poster it is easy to identify how the boundaries between word and image have practically been erased; the ‘text extends the graphics and the graphics unify and articulate the text’.

 

Black Mountain College:

The founders of the College believed that the study and practice of art were indispensable aspects of a student's general liberal arts education, and they hired Josef Albers to be the first art teacher. Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes people such as Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers. All created art which used unified visual language as a technique.

 

Can you see any subsequent or development of this in art and design education in my experience?

 

Yes because I want to use these techniques to help produce my own work which will have a meaning.

 

Where does the idea of universal come from?

 

Anything can become universal. Any moment any person’s idea at any one moment, any artifact, if you could understand it well enough would be a portal into the whole rest of the universe.

 

Is there a need to think of visuality in terms of a universal language?

 

Yes because it’s another way of expressing yourself and you can infer and present different messages within art and design. It’s a different way of communicating.