Occurrence of Chinese Characters and Visual Communication in the Plane

The needs of prehistoric human beings to convey and record information are the preconditions for the generation of human language. Prior to the birth of text, the means by which human beings conveyed information were mainly sounds and forms. The means of recording information was mainly to create signs by various modeling means and read information visually. Visual communication design This human social and cultural activity can be traced back to the moment when human beings first portrayed figures and symbols on the rock wall.

Chinese people’s creative thinking, creative thinking and expression ability of Chinese people’s creativity and creative ability are reflected in the process of forming the “likeness to take images” mentality and the ability to reproduce the creative “images” of objects. The ability to generalize and express creative image of things. The occurrence of Chinese characters is inevitable when humans' strong demand for words further stimulates their ability to do so. Humans began to understand the use of symbols, text, and graphics to record and convey information on the surfaces of objects or in various planes. This method is called the visual communication of information in two dimensions. When this kind of activity was consciously transformed into a kind of productive force by the “wise man” of the ancestors, it became one of the necessary means for the development of human culture.

Chinese characters have always been a loyal recorder of Chinese civilization and a solid carrier of Chinese culture. Even if it ignores its character as a character, the cultural connotation carried by Chinese characters alone is still profound. Geng Kehe pointed out that the preservation and preservation of Chinese characters in ancient Chinese characters are historical and pure, and they have the irreplaceable value of other documents. The uniqueness, accuracy, and stability of this type of writing and expression of Chinese culture are indisputable. The influence and inspiration of Chinese characters and related art forms on Chinese graphic design art has always been accompanied by the inheritance and development of Chinese culture.

I. Analysis of Creative and Creative Thinking Characteristics of Chinese Characters

The process of the evolution of Chinese characters is actually a long and complicated design process of Chinese characters. It has continued until today.

Graphic symbols are the means to record and convey information before the text appears. Prior to the creation of Chinese characters, Hua Xia Xian Min realized that depicting symbols and depicting graphics on the surface of objects can not only enrich the decorative effect, but also make the recorded content suitable for more accurately conveying information needs.

Aristotle said in "On the Mind": "The mind can never be thought without imagery." "Object image" and "image" are external images or phenomena of things that can be directly captured by human senses. The prehistoric ancestors' further development of the ability to summarize and express the creativeness of the image in the two-dimensional space has become a higher level of consciousness of "imagery" thinking. "Object image", "image" and "imagery" together constitute the thinking medium and tool for the Chinese people to understand the objective world, and form a kind of thinking and creative ability that can refine the form, induce and shape.

Observe the evolution of the lizard pattern and the evolution of the bird pattern on the Xindian cultured pottery. The evolution of the bird pattern on the color pottery of the Majiayao culture and the large number of pottery texts that are more similar to the Chinese characters in Wucheng culture pottery and stone carving characters are very easy to see. The path to the symbol evolution. In the ancestors' summary and improvement of the existing symbols, combined with the creation of new symbols, the concept of words was gradually established, and eventually the Chinese characters appeared. From the perspective of Chinese aesthetic psychological development, the characteristics of the “image thinking” of Chinese prehistoric times were first preserved in Chinese characters. The creation and use of Chinese characters, and the use of Chinese characters as an artistic expression medium, is one of the concrete externalized forms of the Chinese “image thinking”, and is also a creative and creative capability under the guidance of “image thinking” and aesthetic consciousness.

The design of Chinese character fonts has continued from the appearance of Chinese characters for a moment. This is a design activity that summarizes the previous experience of symbolic expression and creates new performance symbols. It is an unconscious design of fonts. The main motivation is not how to write existing text better, but how to establish it. A pattern symbol that is not easy to confuse, or a symbolic system that is textual. The initial writing of Chinese characters was to create a way to express Chinese characters using lines. Prior to becoming an art, calligraphy was actually a design art of Chinese characters.

The meaning of Chinese characters to Chinese people is not only written symbols, but also contains a standard of truth. The formation of the standard of truth in the formation of this Chinese character is rooted in the inheritance of future generations' worship of the ancestors' Holy Spirit and the will and concept of the sage. In the creation and application of Chinese characters, Chinese people place their own feelings and ideas about the external world, their own emotional experiences and moral standards in this block-word system.

More importantly, in observing the patterns of pottery and ceramics, we found that the ancestors had already paid attention to the position of the symbols on the surface of the pottery, and the consciousness of the position of the operating symbols had emerged, and this consciousness and behavior were the seeds of writing design.

Looking at prehistoric to Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese people's visual transmission of information in two dimensions has the characteristics of transition from figurative depictions to graphic symbols. Huaxia Xianmin has already consciously or unconsciously applied certain elements of graphic design to his own cultural creation activities, but this kind of activity is different from graphic design in the modern sense.

Second, visual communication activities in two-dimensional space

In the plane, the use of three design elements: text, illustration, and arrangement, and the design activities of communicating information through human visual senses are the basic definitions of modern graphic design. With the advent of the industrial era and the beginning of large-scale machine printing, the prelude to modern graphic design was opened.

Starting from the Oracle era, Chinese people's visual communication of information in two dimensions has revealed its features and forms, and it has been applied in practical fields. Before the advent of Oracle, when these mysterious totems, symbols, decorative meanings, and symbols and original texts used to record major events were used, the pursuit of the form of beauty by prehistoric “artists” began at least from the Neolithic period. This pursuit also serves as a part of civilization, accompanied by the maturity and inheritance of aesthetic concepts. Ancient "artists" have accumulated experience in the combination of motifs and symbol arrangement in the depiction of practical purposes. From the discovery and research of the three ancient Chinese characters and bronze wares and pottery, we can see the inheritance of this kind of experience.

The format of Oracle's layout is very particular, but no matter what the mystery of these layouts, they all have some elements of modern graphic design: design fonts, choreographed texts, and line drawings on separate bones and Oracle simultaneously. Arranged together.

The more and more design improvements made by Oracle from Chinese characters and Chinese character fonts, as well as the frequent use of words and illustrations, show that the Chinese people have gradually formed a kind of integrated pursuit of words and patterns in the plane. The unique ways of visual communication activities, all of which show the shape of China's graphic design.

The earliest arranging of Chinese characters and pictures in a certain plane so that they can convey certain information can be called the first graphic design work in ancient China. This should be the simple book. The archaeological discovery of the long sand magazine, Chu Chushu, looks like the 12-horoscope divination book we now have illustrated. The twelve deities representing the twelve months on the seals are unusual in design, and there are chapters in the auxiliary texts and illustrations. In the Han Mawangdui book “Astronomy and Meteorology Miscellaneous Accounts”, the illustrations of comets and other astrological signs are arranged vertically with explanatory texts, and illustrations and texts are arranged in an orderly manner. The layout of pictures and texts such as "Bo Board accounted for" is more mature, regular and orderly, and the arrangement of words and graphics in some of the tablets is similar to the grid system method commonly used in modern graphic design teaching. Chinese people have reached a high level in the design of texts, the creativity of graphics, and the overall layout of graphics. It is also the first time that the Chinese have established this art form and developed it to an unprecedented height.

Third, the relationship between Chinese characters "Liu Yi" and modern image design

Rudolph Arnheim believes that "the real creative thinking activities in the field of human cognition activities are carried out through the 'image'." The Chinese people's thinking has obvious "imagery" thinking characteristics. Later generations summarized the creation and use of Chinese characters as "Liu Yi." The homology of creative thinking methods also enables us to further understand the interaction between Chinese characters and the visual communication activities of two-dimensional information.

According to Andre Leroy-Guyon, Chinese characters create a symbolic relationship between sounds and phonetic symbols (a group of intentions), which provides great space for Chinese poetry and calligraphy. Chinese writing represents a state of equilibrium in human history. On the one hand, it expresses the concept of mathematics or biology fairly accurately. On the other hand, it retains the possibility of using the oldest written expression system. It is not a sentence but a group of meaningful images. The tension of the image is full of implied meaning.

The creation of Chinese characters is essentially a kind of "abstract abstraction" based on the imagery thinking, because this abstract thinking always revolves around the design activities of hieroglyphs and ideographs.

The method of character creation in Chinese characters contains the general characteristics of the image of the design. The design image here refers to the visual result that we ultimately get in graphic design, or a certain part of it. Design images are the specific shapes and gestures that designers use to express their intentions in a visual way and cause information exchanges between people. The three main meanings of designing images are as follows: 1. Through visual channels; 2. Specific and vivid. Image; third, visual symbols that can cause information exchange. The “concrete and vivid” design image features reflected in the Chinese characters after the librarian are weaker than the Chinese characters before the librarian, but they are the most obvious compared with other languages ​​in the world today. The images contained in Chinese characters express the attitudes and observations of the Chinese nation for the natural world, human society, and the human spiritual world for thousands of years. The traces of culture in different eras are reflected in them.

The syntactic method of Chinese characters is a kind of image description of human psychology. It is also an image of subject and object isomorphism and an active and meaningful pictographic method. On the one hand, it is the appearance of imagery, which has the ability to capture and store information. On the other hand, it allows the recipient to further process the image and acquire the image through vision to form a certain concept and guide social activities.

At the same time, the method of character creation in Chinese characters also embodies the feature of "generality of things". The development of the radical side of the Chinese character from the simplification to the development of the Chinese character is also included in the design process of the Chinese character. The design image feature of the “generality of the concept of the thing” has emerged in the process. The “mountain” character of the Chinese character captures the intention of “mountain” and summarizes the “image” of different forms of mountains as standing upright above the flat ground. It also captures the concept of mountains and summarizes them as high and dangerous. feature.

Chinese characters are a reflection of the meaning of designing image symbols. As a special form of design image symbol, it consists of linguistic symbols and non-linguistic symbols. It strips off the character of Chinese language language and it is close to a non-language symbol. Susan Lange pointed out that most people's definition of symbols ignores the most important kind of rational thinking value that symbols have, or ignore the most important function of symbols, that is, formalize experience and adopt this form. Experience will be presented objectively to provide important functions for people's observation, logical intuition, understanding and understanding. Chinese characters have such a function, so they can give a unique image to the appearance of subjective experience such as attitude, emotion and emotion.

Words are the written symbols of language, and they are the common visual signal systems for the exchange of information between people. These symbols can be flexibly written in languages ​​made up of sounds, making information widely available. When pictures, symbols, and linguistic forms show a fixed or tacit connection, they complete the transition to writing. Visual communication design is often carried out in a process similar to this, except that the final result is not a simple text, but a visual communication work that integrates multiple elements. Its ability to express is not only a matter of “writing” sounds. Constituent language