Graphics
Graphic redirects here. For the Victorian newspaper, see The Graphic.
Graphics are visual presentations on some surface such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics often combines text, illustration, and color. Graphics Design may consist of the deliberate selection, creation, or arrangement of typography alone, as in a brochure, flier, poster, web site, or book without any other element. Clarity or effective communication may be the objective, association with other cultural elements may be sought, or merely, the creation of a distinctive style.
Graphics can be functional or artistic. Graphics can be imaginary or represent something in the real world. The latter can be a recorded version, such as a photograph, or an interpretation by a scientist to highlight essential features, or an artist, in which case the distinction with imaginary graphics may get blurred.
History
The earliest graphics known to anthropologists studying prehistoric periods are cave paintings and markings on boulders, bone, ivory, and antlers created during the Upper Palaeolithic period from 40,000 - 10,000 B.C. or earlier. Many of these were found to record astronomical, seasonal, and chronological details. Some of the earliest graphics and drawings known to the modern world, from almost 6,000 years ago, are that of engraved stone tablets and ceramic cylinder seals, marking the beginning of the historic periods and the keeping of records for accounting and inventory purposes. Records from Egypt predate these and papyrus was used by the Egyptians as a material on which to plan the building of pyramids; they also used slabs of limestone and wood. From 600-250 BC the Greeks played a major role in geometry. They used graphics to represent their mathematical theories such as the Circle Theorem and the Pythagorean theorem.
Drawing
- Main articles: Drawing and Technical drawing.
Drawing is a means of passing time, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools which simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending.
Drawing is generally considered distinct from painting, in which colored pigments are suspended in a liquid medium and usually applied with a brush. Many great drawers include Sir Michael Ash and Leonardo da Vinci.
Painting
- Main article: Painting
In the Middle Ages paintings were very distorted, for example with people on a castle wall disproportionally large because they were what was important in the painting. Later realism and perspective became more important, symbolised by the use of a frame with a wire mesh that the painter would look through at the scene to precisely copy those dimensions on the canvas that had a corresponding grid drawn on it. During the Renaissance artists took a non-mathematical approach to drawing. Giotto di Bondone and Duccio di Buoninsegna made great advancements in graphics by using perspective drawing with the use of symmetry, converging lines and foreshortening.
Printmaking
- Main article: Printmaking
Printmaking originated in China after paper was invented (about A.D. 105). Relief printing first flourished in Europe in the 15th century, when the process of papermaking was imported from the East. Since that time, relief printing has been augmented by the various techniques described earlier, and printmaking has continued to be practiced as one of the fine arts.
Line Art
Etchings
- Main article: Etchings
Etching is an intaglio method of printmaking in which the image is incised into the surface of a metal plate using an acid. The acid eats the metal, leaving behind roughened areas, or if the surface exposed to the acid is very narrow, burning a line into the plate. The process is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer (circa 1470-1536) of Augsburg, Germany, who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking. Etching is also used in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards and semiconductor devices.
Illustration
- Main article: Illustration
An Illustration is a visualisation such as drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that stresses subject more than form. The aim of an Illustration is to elucidate or decorate a story, poem or piece of textual information (such as a newspaper article) Traditionally by providing a visual representation of something described in the text.
Illustrations can be used to display a wide range of subject matter and serve a variety of functions like:
- giving faces to characters in a story;
- displaying a number of examples of an item described in an academic textbook (e.g. A Typology);
- visualising step-wise sets of instructions in a technical manual.
- communicating subtle thematic tone in a narrative.
- linking brands to the ideas of human expression, invididuality and creativity.
- making a reader laugh or smile.
Graphs
- Main article: Graphs
A chart or graph is a type of information graphic that represents tabular numeric data. Charts are often used to make it easier to understand large quantities of data and the relationship between different parts of the data.
Diagrams
- Main article: Diagrams
A diagram is a simplified and structured visual representation of concepts, ideas, constructions, relations, statistical data, anatomy etc used in all aspects of human activities to visualize and clarify the topic.
Symbols
- Main article: Symbols
A symbol, in its basic sense, is a conventional representation of a concept or quantity; i.e., an idea, object, concept, quality, etc. In more psychological and philosophical terms, all concepts are symbolic in nature, and representations for these concepts are simply token artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a symbolic meaning, or symbolism.
Geometric design
Maps
- Main article: Maps
A map is a simplified depiction of a space, a navigational aid which highlights relations between objects within that space. Most usually a map is a two-dimensional, geometrically accurate representation of a three-dimensional space.
One of the first 'modern' maps was made by Waldseemüller.
Photography
- Main article: Photography
One difference between photography and other forms of Graphics is that a photographer, in principle, just records a single moment in reality. There doesn't seem to be any interpretation. But a photographer can choose the field of view and the angle and can use other techniques, such as various lenses to distort the view or filters to change the colours. In recent times digital photography has opened the way to an infinite number of fast but strong manipulations. Even in the early days of photography there was controversy over photographs of enacted scenes that were presented as 'real life' (especially in war photography, where it can be very difficult to record the original events). Shifting someone's pupils ever so slightly with simple pinpricks in the negative could have a dramatic effect.
Just the choice of the field of view can have a strong effect, effectively 'censoring out' other parts of the scene, in other words cropping out selected parts or just avoiding including them in the photograph. This even touches on the philosophical question what reality is. Our eyes have their own way of recording visual information and our brains process that information based on previous experience, making us see just what we want to see or what we were taught to see. Photography can do (and even necessarily does) the same, except that someone else interprets for you. Of course, the same applies to other forms of graphics, but there it is obvious and accepted, and even expected because one wants to see not so much what an artist sees but how he sees it. In a different way this applies to technical and scientific drawings such as biological drawings, where one wants to see the essentials of something, say, an insect, not the specifics of this one insect (genotype in stead of phenotype).
Engineering drawings
- Main article: Engineering drawings
An engineering drawing is a type of drawing that is technical in nature, used to fully and clearly define requirements for engineered items, and is usually created in accordance with standardized conventions for layout, nomenclature, interpretation, appearance (such as typefaces and line styles), size, etc.
Computer graphics
- Main article: Computer graphics
In computer graphics there are two types of graphics: Raster, where each pixel is separately defined, and vector, where mathematical formula are used to draw lines (eg 'take two points and draw a parabole between them'), which are then interpreted at the 'receiving end' to produce the graphic. Vectors make for in principle infinitely sharp graphics and usually smaller files, but is limited to relatively simple representations.
In 1950 the first computer-driven display was attached to MIT's Whirlwind I computer to generate simple pictures. This was followed by MIT's TX-0 and TX-2- interactive computing which increased interest in computer graphics in the late 1950s. In 1962 Ivan Sutherland invented Sketchpad, an innovative program that influenced alternative forms of interaction with computers.
In the mid-1960s large computer graphics research projects were begun at MIT, General Motors, Bell Telephone labs, and Lockheed Aircraft. D. T. Ross of MIT developed an advanced compiler language for graphics programming. S.A.Coons, a
External Links
- http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/science/seals/sr-seals-p1.html - cylinder seals - photograph and discussion
- http://www.hiphopgraphics.net - HiphopGraphics.Net