Sinclair ZX81: semigraphical / pseudographical characters
"If you press GRAPHICS (shifted 9) then the cursor will come up as 
: this means graphics mode. If you type in a symbol it will appear in its inverse video form, & this will go on until you press GRAPHICS again or NEWLINE. RUBOUT will have its usual meaning. Be careful not to lose the cursor amongst all the inverse video characters you've just typed in. ...
Right at the beginning are space & ten patterns of black, white & grey blobs; further on there are eleven more. These are called the graphics symbols & are used for drawing pictures. You can enter these from the keyboard, using graphics mode (except for space, which is an ordinary symbol using the 
cursor; the black square is inverse space). You use the 20 keys that have graphics symbols written on them. For instance, suppose you want the symbol 
, which is on the T key. Press GRAPHICS to get the 
cursor, & then press shifted T. From the previous description of the graphics mode, you would expect to get an inverse video symbol; but shifted T is normally <>, a token, & tokens have no inverses: so you get the graphics symbol instead."
(Steven Vickers, 1981, Sinclair Research Limited)
Fig.1 "graphics mode" table from Steven Vickers (1981). "Sinclair ZX81 BASIC Programming", Second Edition 1981, Copyright 1980 Sinclair Research Limited (converted to HTML by Robin Stuart).
2). Matthew Eagles (2008). "ZX81 VDU" TrueType font which replicates the letters, numbers etc. displayed on the screen of the ZX81.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Principles of the Visual Language: A Dialect of Our Own Design
"A visual language informs all design, from architecture to print. Fluency in the same language drawn on by Bauhaus, mid-century Swiss, or postmodern design is essential for brilliant web design. In this practical talk, ground uniquely web-based interactions - from complex CSS3 animations and rotations to JavaScript behaviors - using that time-tested visual primer. Take a more considered approach to choices, evoke the desired emotive responses, learn how to better articulate your design decisions. Extend graphic design's grammar into a visual dialect of web design that guides us to smarter, beautifully balanced juxtapositions of elements in our new, multidimensional web experiences."
(Simon Collison)
Fig.1 Simon Collison (03 June 03 2011) "A Dialect of Our Own Design".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Word as Image: expressive and anthropomorphic motion typography
"Ji Lee is a designer and frequent contributor to the New York Times whose work has been featured on ABC World News and in Newsweek, Wired, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Boing Boing, among others. A former creative director at Google, he is now a creative director at Facebook."
(Amazon.com, Inc.)
Fig.1 Ji Lee, Bran Dougherty-Johnson and Joel Pickard.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Gestalt Principles
"Gestalt is a psychology term which means 'unified whole'. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied."
(Spokane Falls Community College)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing
"Of course, other kinds of assignments involving visuals do occur in college writing pedagogies. Visual analysis (especially advertising analysis) has been commonplace in postsecondary writing instruction for at least fifty years as a part of the post-World War II emphasis on propaganda and semantics characteristic of many composition and communication courses beginning in the 1940s, but that practice did not always or consistently include careful consideration of how images, layout, or graphics actually communicated meaning. Instead, advertising was treated as a subject for critique rather than itself a form of communication that employed both word and image" (Diana George, 2002, p.21).
"If I have given the impression that the media revolution of the fifties and sixties was a tough one for [writing] composition teachers, then I must say here that the world of graphic design, electronic text, and Web technologies certainly will prove even more difficult, though ultimately perhaps more useful for future understandings of composition as design. As with written compositions, Web pages must have an internal coherence; they must, in other words, be navigable. Unlike written compositions, the internal logic of a Web piece is likely to appear first in the visual construction of the page - not only in the images chosen but the colors, the placement of text or links, the font, the use of white space, and other elements linked more closely to the world of graphic design than to composition pedagogy. The work of Anne Wysocki is useful here as she challenges writing teachers to rethink their notions of what composition means - beyond the word and inclusive of the visual. Wysocki writes, 'When we ask people in our classes to write for the Web we enlarge what we mean by composition. None of us are unaware of the visuality of the Web, of how that initial default, neutral grey has a different blankness than typing-paper' ('Monitoring Order'). And whether it is true or not that their teachers are aware of the difference between the blank screen and the blank page, our students are certainly aware of this difference. Many already compose for the Web. Many have worked in the realm of the visual (or the virtual) as constitutive of composing texts of all sorts years before they get to their first-year college courses."
(Diana George, 2002, p.26,27)
Fig.1 Photography: She is Frank, Styling: Tessa O'Connor, Hair/Makeup: Megan Harrison, Model: Bree Unthank @ Giant Model Management [http://wearehandsome.com/a-handsome-project-she-is-frank/]
2). Diana George. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing," College Composition and Communication 54.1 (2002): 11-39.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
