From Childhood To Today

Looking through old cards, projects, essays, amongst other odds and ends, I had noticed something. The way I wrote back in elementary school- and even early on in high school- looks completely different from what it is today. Granted, I now have far more experience writing than when I was in 6th grade, but what I was noticing was not simply an observation in the clarity of my writing, but my penmanship as well.
Letters such as "r" were written as if they wer right triangles without the hypotenuse, while now they are written as seen in any handwriting workbook in a child's backpack. I noticed that as I was able to figure out that a certain letter would look better or be simpler to write, I would gravitate towards writing in that way as opposed to the way I had originally written them.
This, to me, is very similar to the ancient writing form cuneiform- which were originally somewhat complex drawings of each object it represented, but would become more and more simplified until the characters became a series of abstract lines somewhat similar to the originals. The way in which I had taken the writing taught to me has the same logic that those who wrote with cuneiform did: simplifying letters shortens the amount of time it takes to write. Though my letters have not deviated as far as cuneiform did, but they help me write, or feel as if I write, faster, and though I highly doubt letters will change because I write them a certain way, who knows I might start a sudden craze.

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A Need for a Throw Back

Recently, I was given a job illustrating a children's book, and looking through old books I read when I was younger made me think about the early books and how they were illustrated.

Looking at something like The Canterbury Tales, how it uses not only the small pictures on the sides to help describe all of the characters in the group, but also the designs which lined the page and the use of calligraphy which show the first signs of graphic design.

Illustrations in books now, however, seem to be separate entities from the text within, as shown in Harry By the Sea, a book from the 1950s.  Though pictures in today's books also help the reader to understand what happens throughout a story, the two parts of the story still remain separate pieces.  

I feel that publishers of today should look at where books have come from, and use old illuminated manuscripts as the exemplar for future pieces.  The use of graphic design is just as important in a children's book as it is in in any other published material, and we just need to get back to that.

Canterbury Tales picture provided by:http://courses.washington.edu/hum523/dido/dido.notes.html

Harry By the Sea picture provided by:  http://memoriesoncloverlane.blogspot.com/2010/09/hurry-hurry-hurry.html

A Small Introduction

Hi, I am Stephen Saliba, a freshman illustration major at St. John's.  I currently live in Astoria, where I have resided on and off for most of my life.

I do not a have much experience in the world of art, being only 18, other than what I have learned from classes I have taken.  Until last semester, I was not able to take a graphic design course due to my class schedule, and therefore had not been aware of the amount of trial and error that takes place throughout the process, as with any other form of art.  After taking that class, seeing the difficulty, I would like to learn more about the craft and hope that, through the history of visual communications, I will have a much clearer understanding of what graphic design is and how to become more skilled at it.  Through learning about what people have done in the past, I feel that I will be able to solve problems that come up in the future through ideas of my own.