Visible language encompasses typography, graphic design, and any visual medium that communicates an idea. It includes elements such as text size, typeface, color, and placement. Concrete poetry and sign language are examples of visible language. It has its own “grammar” that regulates construction and interpretation.
Visible language refers to how writing systems communicate, such as typography and graphic design. While emphasizing the visual aspect, however, the conceptual parts of the language focus on more than just the basic layout aspect. Communication arts specialists argue that reading and writing form a communication system that is inherently different from spoken language. More generally, visible language can also describe anything that communicates an idea through a visual medium with definite or implicit structures.
The most familiar form of visible language is writing, in which spoken language is represented in a visual medium. Speech and visual language, however, have a number of different properties. Going beyond mere words themselves, visible language encompasses all factors that influence visual communication, including text size, typeface, color, and relative placement of text. These elements of visible language do not correspond directly to anything in spoken language, just as volume and tone of voice have no direct equivalent of writing. There is a significant amount of overlap between this field and the field of graphic design, although visible language is generally concerned with the abstract or academic areas of the field more than with practical application.
Another application of visual language is concrete poetry, also known as shape poetry or dimension poetry, where a poem is laid out on the page in the form of an object being described. A famous example is George Herbert’s 1633 poem “Easter Wings,” which forms the shape of two birds in flight when centered on the page as intended by the author. The emphasis remains on the words themselves, while the form only adds to the meaning. In some more modern poems, however, the main focus is on the visual design, sometimes to the point where the poem cannot be read aloud.
The term visible language can also be applied in a broad sense to forms of communication other than writing. An example of this is sign language, which is an inherently visual, rather than oral, form of communication. American Sign Language (ASL) expresses many elements of language, including tense and directionality, through concrete spatial representations. For example, someone using ASL may gesture backward to indicate that something happened in the past or forward to indicate that something will happen in the future. Visible language can also refer to communications such as abstract art, street signs, or tables and graphics. It can also be said that these have their own form of “grammar”, which regulates their construction and interpretation.
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