In defense of the visual alphabet
By: Dave Gray
Tags: Visual Thinking, Design, Visualization

Christina seems to see this variation in visual alphabets as an invalidation of their usefulness, but I see quite the opposite: validation. People generally don’t copy or develop variations on them if they are not useful. The fact that so many people who are teaching visual thinking require a symbol-set like this is powerful evidence that such a thing is useful and needed.

On Christina’s primary point — that a visual alphabet is only a starting point — I fully agree. The next step is to develop a vocabulary, and a grammar, and the many other elements that make language useful. And I agree with most of the things Christina talks about in her post.

She writes:

“Artistic license is the secret! You have to make your own language!”

In a way, we all have to make our own language. “Just do your own thing” can be a useful concept. Hundreds of years ago Tao-Chi said “The method which consists in following no method is the perfect method.” But the point of language, after all, is to communicate, so language, to have value, must be based on some shared norms.

She writes:

“ I found exploring my own personal visual language was a lot like being a cartoonist, and finding my style. I copied a lot of people.”

“Copy till it feels right” is also a time-honored tradition and has its place. Most art instruction involves some copying of old masters.

Christina did not mention studying nature, which is another time-honored tradition, and, I think, perhaps the most important practice in visual thinking.

She writes:

“ It’s not about shapes! That’s like saying you can learn to write English by drawing lines and circles! (Ok, drawing lines and circles helps you write neatly.)”

Well, I’d prefer something more like “shapes are just the beginning.” Even something as simple as drawing circles should not be lightly dismissed. Making marks — lines and shapes — is the start of making meaning. Picasso said frequently that the path to truly original work was to try to draw a perfect circle. Circle-drawing is practiced daily by some Zen monks and considered a path to enlightenment.

To be useful, any language requires some set of shared norms and rules. As the ideas to be explored and communicated become more complex this becomes even more important. Visual language is, in some ways, as old as the hills. In other ways it is just coming into its own.

“If an artist knows the rules and principles, his work will become faultless and he need have no fear of not succeeding. He may feel bound or restrained for some time, but he will become able to transcend the rules.” Li-K’an, Essay on Bamboo Painting, 14th century.

An old art-school adage is that you must know the rules before you can break them. This is because rules, like alphabets, vocabulary, and grammar are important scaffolding that help others move more quickly up the learning curve. The value of a language grows like the value of any network standard: The more people that become familiar with, and fluent in, a language, the more powerful it becomes.

Christina is right to say that the rules are inconsistent today. For the most part, they are nascent. They are emerging. We are in the early stages of its evolution. Progress is inconsistent. Maps, for example, have evolved some consistent standards: scale, legends, and a set of conventions for depicting roads, borders, bodies of water and so on. Thanks to Edward Tufte, there are some excellent standards for the visual display of quantitative information. A standard set of rules does not exist. But we should be working together to figure them out.

The visual alphabet was never intended to be an end in itself, any more than the Latin alphabet or Arabic numerals. They are simply building blocks to get people started and give them a common framework for working with more complex ideas.

It is still very early days for visual language, and I still believe the visual alphabet is an important concept and an important curriculum that needs to be developed. It should be taught in grade schools alongside English, other languages, and mathematics.

“Make your own language” feels like a step backward for visual language. If we want it to be seriously considered as a peer to reading, writing and arithmetic, we need to develop some rigor and discipline. We need to think of it as language, not just drawing. This is not to say that we need rigid rules. Language is a living thing, it evolves over time organically, and the rules, it seems to me, often come later. Standard spelling in English did not begin emerge until the 1500s, in part driven by the invention of the printing press. That kind of standardization is something visual thinking is not ready for yet.

But we should be thinking about it. The fact that there are no explicit, codified rules and standards does not mean that there are not such things as good and bad form, good and bad habits, well-formed ideas and poorly-formed ones. We can see these things intuitively, but just because we have not articulated the deep structures does not mean they do not exist. We should be looking for these deep structures, principles and commonalities that make visual language such an effective mode of thinking and communicating.

I want to add that do believe that Christina and I are, broadly speaking, on the same page. We are friends and colleagues, and part of the same movement, along with Ed Emberly, David Sibbet, Dan Roam, Sunni Brown, Mike Rohde, Austin Kleon, and many others. We agree far more than we disagree.

Visual language is a powerful tool for exploring, understanding, and communicating complex ideas. It should be a standard, not only in education, but in all fields, including business, government, and academia.

Dave Gray is the founder of XPLANE and author of three books: Gamestorming, The Connected Company, and Liminal Thinking.