As a very indecisive person, I spent a couple of days thinking about what to choose for the three events to conduct my research on. In the end, I settled on events that were very close to each other on the timeline but each had a revolutionary impact on the world. The topic I was mostly interested in was Steamboat Willie since I’m a big fan of Walt Disney’s works. However, I found that after delving deeper into the other two events, the launching of Scotch tape and Otto Neurath’s Isotype and infographics, it made me appreciate the history of both.
Learning how to use Invision was quite a ride. I liked how clean the UI was and that you were able to change the size of the text boxes and images to your preference. However, there was a bug with mine where the header image wouldn’t load and the title of my mood board disappeared. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it after troubleshooting several times so I ended up restarting.
If I were to give myself a mark out of 10, I would give myself a 9/10. This project took me a long time to do as I put a lot of effort into my writeups and choosing images that could best represent each event. I didn’t manage my time as well as I hoped though so I’ll have to work on that. There was also a bit of confusion regarding the brief and rubric but I still believe I was able to make the most out of my understanding in order to make the mood board as best of my ability.
Link to my mood board: https://projects.invisionapp.com/boards/AS42Z1PFBUY/
Evolution of the last standing ancient logographic script.
Although English is the largest spoken language in the world, Chinese beats it by a longshot if you only count native speakers. Unlike other ancient languages of Egypt and Sumeria, Chinese writing did not die out and is the only ancient logographic writing system still in use. As one of the oldest surviving languages, one would wonder how Chinese characters stood the test of time and evolved into the widely used script we see today. From drawings to strokes and from complex to simple ones, Chinese characters went through thousands of years of development to include many different styles. Despite their numerous alterations, the characters incredibly have remained close to their original.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Jia Gu Wen 甲骨文)
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact time when Chinese characters originated. The earliest known form of Chinese writing is dated back to the Shang Dynasty (1600 – 1046 B.C.) as inscriptions on animal bones and tortoiseshell. These oracle bones inscriptions were very complex, meaning they had already undergone years of development.
Bronze Inscriptions, (Jin Wen 金文)
By the Zhou Dynasty (1046 – 256 B.C.), Chinese characters evolved through the bronze script – writing cast or engraved on bronze objects. Over 2,000 collected single characters from these bronze objects can be read to this day due to their similarity to the modern Chinese writing system.
Small Seal Characters (Xiao Zhuan 小篆)
Today’s form of Chinese characters was fixed during the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.). After conquesting the country, the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sought to unify his people by standardizing the written language. Previously, many different regional scripts were in use across China so the new simplified script allowed for faster writing and easier communication.
Official Script (Li Shu 隸書) and Regular Script (Kai Shu 楷書)
Even though the seal script allowed for faster writing during its time, it was still improved upon, eventually evolving into the official and regular script during the Han Dynasty (206 – 220 AD). Since the formation of the regular script, there haven’t been any more major changes of evolution for Chinese characters.
Check out the animation above to see evolution of the character for dragon (long 龍).
There was once a popular myth that Chinese writing is pictographic. The thought most likely stemmed from the fact that many of the oracle bone inscriptions were pictograms. However, these characters only comprise about 4% of the modern Chinese script. Think of the characters like they are built out of Lego blocks. One block usually represents the meaning and the other indicates its original pronunciation, which may have changed over time. Of course, there are characters that stand alone but it is now recognized that Chinese writing is logographic. Other logographic languages include Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese, all of which were adapted from Chinese.
Welcome to my first assignment! For my yearbook spread, I tried my best to capture who I am through different imagery, colours and composition. One of the things I enjoy doing in my free time is bullet journaling / scrapbooking so that mainly inspired the theme of my spread. With a combination of textured paper, washi tape, coloured pencils, and a few hand-cut images I printed, I used a lot of layering when creating my layout. After I glued everything down and fine-lined my write-up, I also decorated the space with some small glittery stickers; this added a unique touch and reflected upon my fun-loving personality. Speaking of which, another way I expressed my personality was through the colour palette. I chose to liven up the black and white of the spread with bright pops of pastel colours. Although I tend to be a cheerful person, I’m quite soft-spoken most of the time so I thought that pastels would best express that.
In the end, I would give myself a 7/10 on this project. I spent around 6 hours making it – with planning and cutting out the images being the most time consuming. My major regret with the finished product was that I didn’t write enough. It was difficult to provide a portrait of myself in short answers and I ended up cutting too much out of my spread. If I had given this assignment more thought, it could have turned out more elaborate. Even though I’m happy with how my spread turned out aesthetically, I’m a little disappointed with the simplicity of it. In addition, I realized afterwards that I forgot to include my last name with my first name so there’s that too.
