After Class Chapters 2-3

1. We reviewed chapter 1 and what we did in class on Friday. Laura answered a few questions people asked, assuring us she'd answer more next time. We went over Alphabets (Alpha and Beta from Greeks), went over logograms. We started with the Cretan Phaistos Disk and talked about the Phoneticians and how they spread their alphabet (via boats), thus allowing them to spread the alphabet, giving them the main credit. The Greek alphabet was talked about next and how they gave us the vowels and had very geometric shapes. Everything was very mathematical, including the shapes. They had no spacing or punctuation. They read their words back and forth in a snake like manner. We talked about Latin next, coming from the Romans. They took a lot of their things from Greece, and introduced the serifs. We talked about the the theories of the serifs and how the letterforms were made and had a type of punctuation. We finished the chapter with the Hangul Korean alphabet.

We moved on to the 'Asian Contribution chapter' where people shared what they wrote about in their blogs.  Calligraphy, Oracle Bones and about the evolution of the calligraphic characters. We talked about the invention of paper and the chop. The Chinese were given credit for printing and fireworks and gunpowder and the compass and movable type but movable type was too inconvenient to really catch on.

Afterward we were introduced to the next project on illuminated manuscripts. My group is a group of three with Caroline and Late Medieval. I'm with Robert and Evan.

2. The most interesting thing we talked about today was the evolution of the alphabet in the second chapter.  It was really cool to see the animation on the one Evolution of Alphabets site. Also the debate as to whether the Cretan disk was the first printing or the Chinese was an interesting case to listen about.

3. How did people choose what their symbols would be for their identification stamps/cylinders/blocks