Post based on a book Signs and Symbols : Their Design and Meaning
“Script forms are often compared with styles of architecture and we agree that the spirit and intellectual climate of each age find expression both in the corresponding style of building and in the lettering style of manuscripts and subsequently of printed books.”
We can see how the tendency of rounding letters corresponds to the rounded arch in Romanesque or Norman architecture, and how the pointed arch responds to Gothic or Perpendicular style of building.
Another parallel between architecture and script is seen between Renaissance style and roman capital letters as well as Carolingian minuscule, when in 16th century, the humanists broke up the framework of strict religious dogmatism.
In the 1930s architectural and lettering styles were both subject to the “new functionalism”, when geometry took precedence over freehand.
Plant symbols
All civilizations used plant symbols as expression of life, growth or creation. Sacred lotus blossom is seen as the embodiment of all life, arising from the depths of the water. As a sense of beauty, blossoms and leaves were used as metarials for decoration, and palm branch is still known as a sign of peace.
Tree, as one the most important symbols of humankind, represents a connection between heaven and earth, as well as the concept of the “tree of life” which is directly connected to being used as a firewood, building materials, and tools.
The illustration becomes a symbol, the sacred symbol is modified to make a prosaic mathematical sign, heraldic figures and signatures are transformed into trademarks and logotypes, and the drawing is simplified to make a sign.
Signs, symbols, emblems, and signals, in all their diversity, are penetrating and deeply marking expression of our times, poinitng to the future by comprising and conserving something of the past.
You can get this book here:
I am adding my design of implementing architecture into the letterform:
Neja Kalan, May 2016
