What is language? Languages can be explained in many different forms from alphabets to symbols. Language is a way to communicate doesn’t always have to with words.

What makes language different than other forms of languages is the way they are thought off. You can’t just make up a word call it something because it sounds like it would be named that. Concept and sound image are united to make words/ language. This is done for psychological reasons and their meanings are extremely important from, originating from like Latin or Greek origins, which define our words and language.

 How are symbols or icons related to language? Furthermore, there are different forms of communication like I mention before that aren’t just words. Symbols are also a form of language. Some of the first form of communication come from tally marks to keep track. And the from of grouping items was extremely important which later was expanded upon by hieroglyphs. We ended up using this form of symbols in a more versatile way unlike words. For example, the “X” has many meanings such as, X for a signature, X signals an act of selection and could mean ten in roman numerals.

How does language shape design? What does design do that language cannot? How are language and design related to one another in today’s culture? Like a said earlier it started with tally marks and putting stuff into groups which turned into a clay tablet system known as hieroglyphics, and today we have what Lupton miller calls Modern Hieroglyph. Cook and Shanosky made the man and female with help from the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1974. But before Cook and Shanosky there was a man by the name of Otto Neurath who was Viennese, and in the 1920 made the system Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education). This visual language of was seen as a utopian effort to transcend limitations of Letters by using visual characteristics of typography. It was seen as new breed of the ABC.  Furthermore, Sign and signifiers employed in general communication the way you see a male figure in contrast to a female figure meaning that’s for men / woman. They didn’t need to add more details like a man sitting in a toilet of woman sitting in a toilet because the man in contrast to a woman is enough of difference to give you universal context.