Visual Writing at the State-of-the-Art?

摘要

On the digital road to visual writing, pictograms, icons and signs are becoming available for everyone, following the example of emojis. They can be installed in digital fonts and written by keyboard in a line with letters, to illustrate or replace words. Emojis are close to achieving this state-of-the-art. Pictograms first require modified typography. This allows them to be reduced to letter-size and to embed in digital fonts like emojis. While, considering the advantages and disadvantages of pictograms and emojis, an experimental design will demonstrate how both types of visual characters can be combined in a hybrid writing system. A further step in visualizing language is based on an almost self-evident grammar that can apply equally to emojis, pictograms, and signs. In theory, the project refers to the fact that digital technology is creating a new economy of image processing, and to the realization that the Pictorial Turn, the rehabilitation of visual thinking, is now also being expressed in everyday language, in emails, chats and tweets. The feasibility of this project will currently benefit in particular from an input method that is already used for Chinese words and was implemented by Apple in 2020 with iOS 14. With this method, emojis (and possibly pictograms, icons, and signs) appear in a menu bar when words are entered, and a single tap can replace the letters. Future perspectives are concerned with the emotional and semantic possibilities of animated emojis and pictograms.