This week, the newly formed XPLANE Press achieved its first milestone: The reprinting of Bob Horn’s classic book Visual Language. Horn’s book makes the case that visual language is truly an emerging international language, and — like all languages — it has an inherent order, syntax, and grammar that can be learned and applied. While the world of information design has come a long way in the 10 years since Visual Language was first published, the book’s core message remains relevant today.
Visual Language has been out of print for the last few years, but is now back on the market via the XPLANE store. We will soon be offering it on Amazon as well, where used copies have been selling for upwards of $100. Here’s more from XPLANE founder Dave Gray.
“Currently [Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary] does not recognize ‘concepting’ or ‘to concept’ as a proper mode of speech. Seeing as this is a process that we, as creatives, use on a daily basis, I aim to have Merriam-Webster acknowledge our creative methods and make an addition to their upcoming edition.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Check out this visual over at XPLANE founder Dave Gray’s blog: “Language is more than just communication, it is the primary method by which we do things together. Language is the accumulation of shared meaning — on common ground.”
“Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought. State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country. They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters. Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.”
Jorn Barger: “I often complain to interviewers that ‘weblog’ is the least interesting of my many neologisms. Here’s a sampling of others…”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
“Visual language is any communication which is primarily visual. For the purposes of this wiki, it will focus on an emerging field which focuses on improving thinking, learning and communication by making it more visual. Visual language integrates words, both spoken and written, with visual elements, to enhance and expand the meaning of both.” (Disclosure: This is an XPLANE-related Wiki project that is open to anyone interested in visual language.)
“The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it’s threatening to finish off longhand. When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters. And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 8:16 am
“A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
“It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada. A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal’s cancellation. The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation.”
“Harold Keables taught me how to write. He was my English high-school teacher in the early seventies (1970s, not 1870s). I wasn’t that great a student, so he’s probably having a good laugh in heaven watching me write books and blogs.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
