Introduction: Universal Language

The concept of universal language initially interested me through the potential that the word ‘language’ holds. In definition language is ‘the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.’ I believe this definition restricts the value of the word – language is more than just spoken and written, but exists in image, colour, body language and objects. Many of these languages aren’t necessarily universal, but pose for interesting starting points into which I could begin to explore this idea.

My initial thoughts question aspects such as navigation, how symbols, for example arrows and crosses, represent a well known function of direction and limitations. These incorporate colour to emphasis the meaning. These semiotics are arguably social constructs and do not mean exactly the same worldwide. That said, there is still a wide spread connotation of red representing danger and stop which suggests semiotics has the potential to become a universal language. The most interesting aspect is how semiotics drifts from the need of ‘language’ as the dictionary defines it; it communicates an exact meaning and purpose without any form of verbal or written language to be required.

My decision to approach language with this interpretation stems from my incapability to speak another language. That said there I have never had trouble communicating across ‘language’ barriers; there has always been a way around it, which allows communication to commence without ever even needing to say a word.

Leading on from this, another interesting starting point I began to think about is the relationship with objects, and the way in which humans interact with them. Could this be an example of a language? In a simple example, I am questioning the purpose and understanding of a folded piece of paper. Is there a universal understanding to unfold that paper, a language in which doing an action there is an expectation there will be something on the other said of the paper? This is not strictly a ‘language’, but there is a sense of communication that is a universal understanding. Taking this further, continuing with the basic form of paper, the connotations of a book lead to a universal understanding of how to read it, how to open it, how to turn the page. I am questioning the word language itself, and how it is a communication of any sort.

Body language is another interesting topic in which communication is understood across ‘language’ barriers. Although nothing translates to an exact understanding, the communication of touch, hand gestures, pointing and physical interaction with others can be largely summarised as similar worldwide. The extent of which will be interesting to investigate, as to what exact body language varies across countries and cultures. When thinking about language in sense of the historical, cultural and social context of body language, objects, colours and images, it is important to recognise the differences that can cause complications in understanding of language. Are there repetitive examples of differences in worldwide understanding? Do these things allow for a universal language to be created, applying rules to allow for universal communication and understanding?

In a more general point, I want to explore the semiotics of colour and image, experimenting with these things to question language, communication and understanding in today’s society. What are the smallest possible changes I could possibly make to preconceptions of objects, to change the meaning of that object entirely? Could I change the colour or material of the object to communicate a completely different meaning as to what the original object is?    

When thinking about these senses of language, it is important to incorporate already existing language to give me insight into developing my own work. As well as question colour and image, I want to question the most basic form of language, being spoken and written. How and why does tone change the meaning of something so drastically? Is it possible to speak a incoherent language whilst using the tone of a pre-existing language to communicate what it is that you mean? Further than this, the written text allow for further manipulation. How much can letterforms, alphabets and words be adapted, manipulated, changed and distorted before they are no longer recognisable? How far can this be taken until the meaning of something is completely lost, or even emphasised? Another general question I want to think about is the history behind languages as we know them today. How is there so much variation? Where was the first language created?

Contextual References: Universal Language

Contextual references are important in order to gain insight into questions I will later explore. Based upon my initial questions of semiotics I posed in the introduction to my project, I believe Margaret Calvert will be a valuable source to gain insight into the design of road signs that incorporate colour, shapes, arrows, symbols and text to communicate. Having heard her speak about her design of the British road signs (1957), it is interesting to learn about how colour and shapes are all carefully considered to allow for optimum legibility at high speeds. Navigation and the language of symbolic shapes such as arrows is enhanced by her design to communicate there meaning in the clearest possible way.

Similar to Margaret Calvert’s road signs is Lance Wyman’s design of the Mexico 1968 Olympic symbols. Having seen him speak about it at a unit editions talk in 2016, it is inspiring to hear the amount of testing that went into both the ‘Mexico 68’ logo, as well as the individual symbols for each section of the Olympics. His choice of design was heavily influenced by the need for a universal understanding, as he picked out key sections of each sporting area to communicate it visually. The key shapes on a solid colour were simple enough to understand quickly, as well as being specific enough to each sport, and I believe it to communicate very clearly.  

Returning to the question about the language of objects where I was asking about how paper and books communicate their meaning and purpose universally, a key reference to consider is Tom Philips and his book: ‘A Humument – a treated Victorian novel’ (initially published in 1970). His work questions the boundary between preconceptions of objects, and how they behave in contrast to said preconceptions. The book, as you might expect, would read left to right, and conform to typical expectations of a book. However he builds a narrative by removing, drawing over and crossing out most of each page of the book, except for several words per page, which when read left to right, top to bottom, begin to form sentences.

With manipulation of text in mind, another key source to look at is Spin’s ‘Adventures in typography’ (2017), which question the extent to which language, as we know it, can be changed and distorted before it becomes meaningless and abstract. The magazine uses image, symbols and shapes to recreate type; some clearer than others. The manipulation plays into my questioning of typography to question written language. To what extent can this theory be applied to other languages as well?

Robert Brownjohn produces work in a similar light, as he uses typography to distort words and express their meaning. A key example of his work is the use of ‘+’ ‘-‘ sign to show the symbolic meaning behind the words ‘add’ and ‘minus’. The communication is clever as it is still completely legible as the word it is implying, whilst distorting it enough to also bring in another meaning. His work plays on this boundary between legibility and distortion to find the optimum point at which two meaning can be understood with clarity.

Continuing with the written language, I also want to consider William Burroughs and his work commonly referred to as ‘cut outs’. He constructs poetry, text and sentences by stringing together cut out sentences and words from either previously written text by other authors, or his own writing. His work dates back as early as 1922, using text from that era or older to create a new piece of text to inform a new idea, or to serve as a more interesting read. This questioning of language and reapplication to create new meaning could serve as an interesting approach to question universal language in my own work.

Other aspects to consider, although they do not have exact reference titles, include that of language across culture. An example of this is classical Chinese language, which was and still is read universally across China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. It is the pronunciation of the language that differs vastly. The same is said for the Qur’an, as its language is Arabic, meaning Arabic is universal across Muslims. Accents are key cultural differences that affect the spoken language vastly, and are something to take into consideration.  

Other cultural aspects to consider when questioning language are the sense of social expectations and point of views. Fashion is a language in its own right, having power to state your class and status, often carrying and communicating ideas of what someone is interested in, what they do for a living and many other factors. Fashion, as a language, is just one of many other social factors that people use to express and communicate what they are about.

The language titled ‘Esperanto’ was created to serve as a universal language, created and launched to be spoken world wide, but failed. It is a language which has no regional background or ethnic group, presented as a neutral, international language. It failed in it’s attempts, made by Ludwig Zamenhof, it only has between 10,000 and 2,000,000 speakers today. It was made to be easy to learn and speak worldwide, with a common, regular structure to allow it to do so. Looking into the history of the very first language could be insightful when considering my approach to the question. Sumarian was created between 3300 to 3000 BC, and consist of simply logographic records, but no linguistic or phonological records. Looking back into historical languages could aid me in my research.

The Greater Picture: Universal Language

In previous projects I have explored the use of language through typography. A project, which influenced me vastly into the topic for my final major project, was a typographic response to the Birmingham accent. I explored the distortion of letter forms to communicate the accent, and used languages specific to ethnical background living in Birmingham. This influenced my decision to question the depth of language further, specifying ‘universal language’, as I am also interested in the unity between people formed through language.

The potential that language can become more than written and spoken also excites me. In the most basic explanation, I am questioning communication across cultures, and to what extent there is a greater understanding about certain aspects in this world. To undergo research and testing, I will be using processes such as printmaking, typography and digital software, all of which I have used before, and look to influence my project.

The sense of language being a greater form of communication relates to the bigger picture of me as a designer, as I am constantly questioning how work communicates in comparison to its intended communication. As a designer I want to question this boundary at which something communicates with clarity across a large audience, and it's potential to act as a langue. For example, the design of Margaret Calvert’s road signs is a recognisable from of communication which is understood across a large universal group. It becomes a universal language for that group of people.

Tim Brown: Universal Typography

Tim Brown discusses typography and its origin, exploring how type has developed over time to fit a social understanding of how to read something, what source of information it comes from, and the message it is conveying. Examples of this included a newspaper article, where the social understanding of the narrow column, headers, typefaces, spacing and hierarchy of importance all relates to how we take in information. There is an element of a newspaper layout which leads us to believe that that the written information is hard fact, when in reality the it is written, hand selected and edited to convey a message some higher power wants it's audience to read. 

He later discuses the impact that the internet plays on typography. If everyone can publish, what is being published becomes less valuable. He states 'typography can re-enforce authenticity'. He claims that the internet is the best place for type, that it's layout, typeface, scale, boldness and other factors can be change, optimized and manipulated for the greatest impact whilst still be high clarity on a clean screen. Although I may not agree with this to Tim Brown's degree, it is an interesting  argument posing for discussion about how information is relayed and will continue to be so in the future. Web 2.0 has had a massive impact on information is received by an audience - but what comes after web 2.0? Typography has already had a massive impact online, and will continue to do so as technology advances. 

I am interested in looking at typography in terms of a universal understanding, and this talk invites interesting starting points to which typography and layout is universally understood (particularly when online) and influence the viewers reading experience. How does someone read something, what do they read first, why do they read it?

The Noun Project: Universal Language

THE NOUN PROJECT

A Global Visual Language

The Noun Project is a system whereby 'creators' from all around the world design, and upload symbols to replace any form of language, using well know images and shapes which are supposedly universally understood. Examples are shown above. 

'Creators' upload symbols and millions of users download and use them, in replacement for language where language barriers can cause confusion and miscommunication. The symbols shown above are the ones seen and represented on the home page, meaning they are the ones most recently uploaded and are available to buy and use. The system is logical, as the symbols are representative of exact objects. The difficulty is trying to use the symbols for words which don't describe and object. 

Examples of such are shown below, I used random words and here are some of the outcomes. 

When there is no exact object for a word, the symbols become more and more confusing. They become unpredictable, and without being told what the word is, it might not necessarily work. That said the, in principle the attempt to achieve a universal language is incredible, however I am unsure if this it the right way to go about it. The symbols are just black and white, could colour benefit the system and make it more understandable for words which do not relate to an object?

BIC: Universal Typeface Experiment

BIC: UNIVERSAL TYPEFACE (view here)

Media Monks produced an app which allowed them to encompass the worlds hand writing to create a universal standard of letter forms, and created a typeface out of it.

'Typography meets typology in this handsome experiment that harnesses the world’s handwriting to bring about a global average. In celebration of the most popular pen in history, DDB Tribal Düsseldorf set out to create a typeface that could be considered as universal as BIC’s world-famous Cristal ballpoint pen. The idea was to crowdsource handwriting contributions from around the world and combine them into a single typeface that could be explored through various demographics. Our pretty experiment managed to crowdsource more than a million contributions in less than a month and continues to evolve as more and more people take up the pen to join in.'

Their idea uses an app which allows users to draw letters, which when combined and layered, the company take and overall average created the most standardised letterform. 

The application allows the user to draw the letters on their smartphone, translating the data to your computer where it uploads it to the database of other letters. Then the results are displayed, much like seen below. The orange lines represent the average out of all the ones completed. 

The concept behind the 'universal typeface experiment' allows for a universal typeface to be made. However it is restrictive in the qualities it has, as it doesn't include any form of digital typefaces. It relies solely upon hand written letterforms which act very differently to digital letterforms. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, and it is what the experiment is trying to achieve, however it would be interesting to see an attempt of combining both digital and hand written letterforms. 

Where the experiment is really let down, is the lack of incorporation of other languages. Yes it becomes a universal typeface for English speaking people, but it does not do the same for the other 95% of the world who do not speak English as their first language. Is there a way of incorporating other languages? Or making the app universal to allow for the same outcome to happen in other languages? What might even be interesting is moving away from individual letterforms and getting the audience to write words or phrases, which layer up just as before, creating an average for the lines drawn. Would the outcome still be legible?

'Humans May Speak A Universal Language'

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Scientist Dr Christiansen has recently discovered similarity's in pronunciations across a large range of languages. His studies show that there might be a universal key and understanding to languages which is embedded in the human brain. Sarah Knaapton states and quotes him; 'the word for ‘leaf’ is likely to include the sounds ‘l,’ ‘p’ or ‘b’ while ‘sand’ will probably use the sound ‘s’. The words for ‘red’ and ‘round’ are likely to include the ‘r’ sound.' Connections are made between languages, highlighting certain common sounds when describing the same thing. "It doesn't mean all words have these sounds, but the relationship is much stronger than we'd expect by chance," added Dr Christiansen.

'Other words found to contain similar sounds across thousands of languages include ‘bite’, ‘dog’, ‘fish’, ‘skin’, ‘star’ and ‘water’. The associations were particularly strong for words that described body parts, like ‘knee’, ‘bone’ and ‘breasts.’'

'The team also found certain words are likely to avoid certain sounds. This was especially true for pronouns. For example, words for ‘I’ are unlikely to include sounds involving u, p, b, t, s, r and l. ‘You’ is unlikely to include sounds involving u, o, p, t, d, q, s, r and l.'

Perhaps language is buried deep within humanities roots that there is always going to be overlap, where language derives from older languages and so there is shared ancestry languages. This is what would allow for common saying to be made, as the origin of several languages could all derive from the same place, thus the same sounds are used. Could there be a universal language already existent? Is it a past language that a large group of people shared? Or is there a way of learning more about these forms of language to create a new universal language?